Part 5 (1/2)
BAROJA, YOU WILL NEVER AMOUNT TO ANYTHING
(_A Refrain_)
”Baroja does not amount to anything, and I presume that he will never amount to anything,” Ortega y Ga.s.set observes in the first issue of the _Spectator_.
I have a suspicion myself that I shall never amount to anything.
Everybody who knows me has always thought the same.
When I first went to school in San Sebastian, at the age of four--and it has rained a great deal since that day--the teacher, Don Leon Sanchez y Calleja, who made a practice of thras.h.i.+ng us with a very stiff pointer (oh, these hallowed traditions of our ancestors!), looked me over and said:
”This boy will prove to be as sulky as his brother. He will never amount to anything.”
I studied for a time in the Inst.i.tute of Pamplona with Don Gregorio Pano, who taught us mathematics; and this old gentleman, who looked like the Commander in _Don Juan Tenorio_, with his frozen face and his white beard, remarked to me in his sepulchral voice:
”You are not going to be an engineer like your father. You will never amount to anything.”
When I took therapeutics under Don Benito Hernando in San Carlos, Don Benito planted himself in front of me and said:
”That smile of yours, that little smile ... it is impertinent. Don't you come to me with any of your satirical smiles. You will never amount to anything, unless it is negative and useless.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
Women who have known me always tell me: ”You will never amount to anything.”
And a friend who was leaving for America volunteered:
”When I return in twenty or thirty years, I shall find all my acquaintances situated differently: one will have become rich, another will have ruined himself, this fellow will have entered the cabinet, that one will have been swallowed up in a small town; but you will be exactly what you are today, you will live the same life, and you will have just two pesetas in your pocket. That is as far as you will get.”
The idea that I shall never amount to anything is now deeply rooted in my soul. It is evident that I shall never become a deputy, nor an academician, nor a Knight of Isabella the Catholic, nor a captain of industry, nor alderman, nor Member of the Council, nor a common cheat, nor shall I ever possess a good black suit.
And yet when a man has pa.s.sed forty, when his belly begins to take on adipose tissue and he puffs out with ambition, he ought to be something, to sport a t.i.tle, to wear a ribbon, to array himself in a black frock coat and a white waistcoat; but these ambitions are denied to me. The professors of my childhood and my youth rise up before my eyes like the ghost of Banquo, and proclaim: ”Baroja, you will never amount to anything.”
When I go down to the seash.o.r.e, the waves lap my feet and murmur: ”Baroja, you will never amount to anything.” The wise owl that perches at night on our roof at Itzea calls to me: ”Baroja, you will never amount to anything,” and even the crows, winging their way across the sky, incessantly shout at me from above: ”Baroja, you will never amount to anything.”
And I am convinced that I never shall amount to anything.
THE PATRIOTISM OF DESIRE
I may not appear to be a very great patriot, but, nevertheless, I am.
Yet I am unable to make my Spanish or Basque blood an exclusive criterion for judging the world. If I believe that a better orientation may be acquired by a.s.suming an international point of view, I do not hold it improper to cease to feel, momentarily, as a Spaniard or a Basque.
In spite of this, a longing for the accomplishment of what shall be for the greatest good of my country, normally obsesses my mind, but I am wanting in the patriotism of lying.