Part 22 (1/2)

”I never stated anything of the kind.”

”What is that?”

”No, sir.”

”But aren't you Pio Baroja?”

”I am not, sir.”

Dicenta turned on his heel and marched back to his seat.

Sometime later, Dicenta and I became friends, although we were never very intimate, because he felt that I did not appreciate him at his full worth. And it was the truth.

THE POSTHUMOUS ENMITY OF SAWA

I met Alejandro Sawa one evening at the Cafe Fornos, where I had gone with a friend.

As a matter of fact, I had never read anything which he had written, but his appearance impressed me. Once I followed him in the street with the intention of speaking to him, but my courage failed at the last moment.

A number of months later, I met him one summer afternoon on the Recoletos, when he was in the company of a Frenchman named Cornuty.

Cornuty and Sawa were conversing and reciting verses; they took me to a wine-shop in the Plaza de Herradores, where they drank a number of gla.s.ses, which I paid for, whereupon Sawa asked me to lend him three pesetas. I did not have them, and told him so.

”Do you live far from here?” asked Alejandro, in his lofty style.

”No, near by.”

”Very well then, you can go home and bring me the money.”

He issued this command with such an air of authority that I went home and brought him the money. He came to the door of the wine-shop, took it from me, and then said:

”You may go now.”

This was the way in which insignificant bourgeois admirers were treated in the school of Baudelaire and Verlaine.

Later again, when I brought out _Sombre Lives_, I sometimes saw Sawa in the small hours of the morning, his long locks flowing, and followed by his dog. He always gripped my hand with such force that it did me some hurt, and then he would say to me, in a tragic tone:

”Be proud! You have written _Sombre Lives_.”

I took it as a joke.

One day Alejandro wrote me to come to his house. He was living on the Cuesta de Santo Domingo. I betook myself there, and he made me a proposition which was obviously preposterous. He handed me five or six articles, written by him, which had already been published, together with some notes, saying that if I would add certain material, we should then be able to make up a book of ”Parisian Impressions,” which could appear under the names of us both.

I read the articles and did not care for them. When I went to return them, he asked me:

”What have you done?”

”Nothing. I think it would be difficult for us to collaborate; there is no possible bond of unity in what we write.”