Iberia (33 page)
Authors: James Michener
For several days I refused to enter the place, but finally a
Spanish friend took me inside and I saw that the interior was a
bleak two-tiered circular cloister, unfinished and gapingly open
to the sky. This meant that the brutal cube had rooms only around
the four sides and these I did not care to see, but my friend
insisted, and on the second floor I did find something that made
the visit rewarding. I was standing in a royal dining hall, one end
of which was decorated by a marble fireplace featuring a medallion
bas-relief showing Leda being raped in the most explicit way by
Jupiter in the form of a swan, and I said to my guide, ‘I’ll bet a
lot of Spaniards spilled their soup in this room,’ but he was already
leading me to another hall that contained a painting which years
ago I had seen reproduced. It was titled ‘The Expulsion of the
Jews’ and was by Emilio Sala (1850-1910), who won a prize with
it at the Berlin Exposition of 1891. The guide said, with much
enthusiasm, ‘It shows us a historic event which occurred in this
very city in January, 1492. You see King Fernando on his throne
and beside him Queen Isabel. Look at their banner which united
Spain with its motto, Tanto Monta. It means that he and she are
equal in dignity. Now, who are those two churchmen who seem
so excited? The one in crimson, under better control, is Cardinal
Mendoza, who served as a general during our Christian victory
at Granada. The one in black is the great Cardinal Cisneros. Look
at him point with his forefinger as he shouts, “The Jews must go!”
You can see that Fernando and Isabel don’t want to throw their
Jews out, but Cisneros insists.’ I was fascinated by the canvas, vast
in size, for it was the only one I knew showing the four figures
whose histories had become so important to me: Fernando, Isabel,
Mendoza and Cisneros, and to see it was worth a trip even through
the gloomy palace of Carlos V.
Alas, my enthusiasm was misguided. Long after I had left
Granada, I discovered that the agitated figure in black was not
my hero Cisneros but rather his predecessor as head of the
Inquisition, Tomás de Torquemada, and the scene represented
was the famous incident in which King Fernando announced that
he had decided not to expel the Jews because they had offered
him a bribe of thirty thousand ducats not to do so. Then
Torquemada stormed into the room where the sovereigns were
listening to the Jews plead for their freedom and he waved on
high a crucifix, shouting at the same time, ‘Judas Iscariot betrayed
our Lord for thirty pieces of silver. The kings of Spain would sell
him a second time for thirty thousand. Well, here he is.’ With
this he threw the crucifix onto the table and disappeared, crying
as he went, ‘Take him and barter him for thirty thousand pieces
of silver.’ And the decision to expel was decided upon that day.
In Granada one has conflicting thoughts about Cisneros, for
it was as late as 1499, when passions aroused by the Conquest
should have subsided, that he ordered the collecting of all Muslim
manuscripts in the area and supervised their burning in what has
often subsequently been lamented as a major crime against both
history and scholarship.
It is appropriate, I suppose, that Fernando and Isabel rest
permanently in Granada, the city which had attracted them like
a magnet and whose capture became the principal jewel in their
crown. In the center of the city, in a royal chapel of florid but
pleasing design, lying adjacent to the cathedral, of which it is a
part, rest the tombs of the Catholic Kings. The plain leaden caskets
lie below ground in a crypt, which can be visited so as to satisfy
oneself that the wishes of the kings were respected; they preferred
to be buried simply and without undue panoply. But above them,
on ground level, a magnificent wrought-iron grille subtends an
area which is further enclosed by a plain but handsome iron fence,
inside which stand four splendid catafalques, the first pair carved
in Genoa of Carrara marble, the second pair in Spain. They
represent four royal persons who concern us repeatedly in this
book. As you face them, King Fernando V lies to your left in
premier position, hands on chest and very regal. Beside him, in
second position, lies Queen Isabel I, hands folded and, for some
reason I have not been able to discern, looking away from her
husband. As we shall see later, he gave her ample reason for
dismissing him in this manner, but it was not within her character
to do so and I find the tombs disturbing. Beside the great kings,
and elevated above them, which seems quite improper, rest two
of the unhappiest rulers who ever held a throne in Europe. The
young king, who again lies to the left in the premier position, is
Philip of Burgundy and Austria, known in Spain as Felipe I of
Castilla, recognized in his lifetime as the most elegant of princes
and known through Europe as Philip the Handsome. He was a
miserable, mean human being, and it is shameful to have him
sleeping where he does, for he served Spain poorly, abused the
faith Isabel placed in him, fought openly against Fernando and
crucified his unfortunate wife, their daughter Juana, who lies
beside him. This time it is understandable that the thin-faced,
demented woman looks the other way. Hers is a tragic figure,
excellently portrayed by the Spanish sculptor, who may have
worked from a death mask but also from reports of how the mad
queen behaved.
The fact that young Felipe’s body is here at all is a compelling
story, for the path to this sepulcher was a grim one, but of that
we shall hear later. For the present we must fix in our minds the
noble panoply of the four kings: Fernando, Isabel, Felipe and
Juana la Loca. No kings of Europe enjoy a more gracious
mausoleum.
In the sacristy next to the chapel appear two wooden statues
which bring the Catholic Kings to life, for here are Fernando and
Isabel kneeling on purple pillows as they pray. The wood is
polychromed, so that the cheeks of the rulers look as if they had
been rouged this morning, and each strand of hair is carved and
painted a Spanish black. The statues are delightful and show two
pudgy-jowled monarchs in the early years of their reign, with
none of the heavy seriousness that characterized them later. They
are so appealing that they must be quite popular with Spanish
visitors, but I had never heard of them; one look satisfied me that
this was the way they appeared to their subjects, and now
whenever I think of the Catholic sovereigns, I think of them as
these polychromed statues kneeling in prayer. Had they been
shown sweating over the problems of government, or leading
armies, or haggling with cardinals, or writing snippy letters to the
Pope, or deciding what to do with Fernando’s regular procession
of illegitimate children, the statues would be closer to the truth.
These two had but little time for prayer, yet that is how they come
down to us.
One day as I was walking through the gardens adjacent to the
Alhambra, I came upon a kiosk selling a postcard titled ‘Carmen
de Manuel de Falla,’ a carmen being a rustic house and garden,
and it showed an attractive patio with a winding iron-railed
staircase leading to the second floor. I knew that Falla (1876-1946)
was of Catalan descent but did not know that he had been born
in Cádiz and had lived in Andalucía, even though some of his
themes appeared to be of that derivation. ‘Yes!’ the kiosk keeper
said. ‘Don Manuel had his carmen along that road that climbs
the hillside. In the shadow of the Alhambra, you might say.’
I walked along a beautiful road that clung to the hill and
provided a fine view of the valley, but soon I came to a fork, and
the left path was so narrow that cars could not enter. I hesitated,
but a woman cried, ‘Is it for Falla’s carmen? Along, along.’ This
trail was even more pleasant than the other and finally I came to
an unpretentious house with a garden that climbed up the hill to
three different levels, each of which had its unique natural quality.
I had not at this point determined whether this was the carmen
of Spain’s foremost modern musician, but I was satisfied that it
was the house of one who loved nature, and it required no
imagination to visualize Falla sitting in this exquisite spot as he
traced out in his mind the piano passages for his delicate orchestral
suite
(Nights in the Gardens of
Spain, 1916).
Once inside the house one knew that it had belonged to Falla,
for it was crowded with mementos of a life to which fame had
come abundantly, not only in Spain but also in France. In the
bedroom hung the English card commemorating his first
communion: ‘His death our life. His life our death. June 26, 1886.’
For his first confession on June 20, 1884, the card had been in
French. Here also were the works of art he had enjoyed: a Goya
etching showing the torero Joaqín Rodriguez, called Costillares;
a fine Hiroshige print showing two geese, one white, one colored,
flying against a full moon with three reeds below. Teófilo Gautier
had lived in this street and there was a memento giving his Spanish
name. Here Federico García Lorca had attended a testimonial
dinner to Falla on February 9, 1927, and farther on was a
recollection of Pío Baroja. In these rooms I felt close to Falla, but
it was in the wandering gardens that his music came alive.
Standing beside the bamboo trees and looking out across the
dry fields and mountains of Andalucía, I could begin to hear those
extraordinary rhythms he had used in his four chief works,
El amor brujo
(Love the Magician, 1915),
El sombrero de tres picos
(The Three-Cornered Hat, 1919) and the little-known
El retablo
de Maese Pedro
(The Puppet Show of Master Peter, 1920). Here,
too, I could understand better how he caught those dark and
precise chords so representative of Spanish thought.
To Falla, Spain was important, and the part of Spain he
understood best was this hot, impassioned Andalusian section.
Contrary to what most believe and many write, he did not
introduce folk themes directly into his music, for in his work only
two or three instances of such use occur, but he did allow the
intention of folk music to infect him, and his re-creation of its
purposes is what makes his music so superior to that of colleagues
like Albéniz, Granados and Turina. The more I hear Falla the
more convinced I am that he was a true original. He is a very clean
and honest composer; he speaks with a compact vocabulary and
his message is no less profound because it is so brief. I once had
the interesting experience of hearing Igor Markevich directing a
conductors’ school in a baroque church in northern Spain, and
for two days I listened to the Radio Madrid Orchestra playing
dances from
, over and over again, and two things
impressed me: the music never grew stale, for on each repetition
I heard some brilliant bit of orchestration or juxtaposition that I
had missed before, so rich was Falla’s construction; but when the
would-be conductors were German or English or Russian, they
seemed to fight the rhythms, whereas when the conductor was a
Spaniard he fell with ease into what Falla intended. Conversely,
of course, the other Europeans found Mozart rather easy to
handle, whereas the Spaniards treated him too heavily.
Falla is the most important composer Spain has produced since
the closing years of the sixteenth century. It is Falla’s solid
authenticity that appeals to me, the high specific gravity of all he
does. His themes are inventive and speak of the Spanish soil; his
rhythms are unexpected and although they do not copy the
handclapping of flamenco, they derive from it, as in that series
of twenty-one staccato chords that closes the ‘Ritual Fire Dance’
in
and the seven strange chords that intrude in the
Miller’s farruca in
El sombrero
; but it is principally his
orchestration, as precise as Bizet’s, that accounts for the high
quality of his work.
That he did not compose much, when compared to
contemporaries like Debussy and Richard Strauss, and that he
did not attempt large pieces in the great tradition followed by
Sibelius are characteristics common to all the Spanish artists of
his day. When I was in Granada, wasting lovely hours in Falla’s
carmen, I had not yet tried to rationalize why the Spanish
composers produced so little and I did not yet see this as part of
a general cultural malaise; that would come later. For the present
I was pleased to have seen the workshop of this notable artist and
to have heard again in memory those unanticipated dark notes
which García Lorca praised.
Then, as I was driving out of Granada on my way back to
Córdoba, I saw on the road map a name which evoked a whole
cascade of sound, trivial, to be sure, but sound which I have long
enjoyed. The map had a small red arrow pointing to a cul-de-sac
and the words Torre Bermeja. I had not known that the Torre
Bermeja actually existed, nor had I realized that if it did exist it
was in Granada, for this was the title of an unimportant orchestral
piece by Isaac Albéniz, another Catalan who chose to write about
Andalucía. I had first heard ‘Torre Bermeja’ (Bright Reddish
Tower) as a student attending a concert in London, and even then
I had enough knowledge to know that this was not a major piece
of music, but it had a captivating lilt and one lambent theme,
which Albéniz overworked. But what made the piece important
to me was the program note which said that the Torre Bermeja
was a Moorish tower, and that was enough to send me
daydreaming of a Spain I had not yet seen. I supposed the tower
to be some magnificent thing which bespoke its Moorishness to
all who saw, and through the years I kept looking for a photograph
of what I was sure must be a considerable structure; since I did
not know what part of Spain it was in, I never saw it, but whenever
I accidentally heard the slow sweet music on the radio I visualized
a brooding Moorish tower and felt a strange identification with
Spain.