JESUS PEREZ
Jesus Perez took us to Spain in spirit while we were still in Paris. We
were off to Spain to paint, that being the normal course of our lives,
but in addition Jan had formed a fixed resolution that happen what might
he was not coming home without having bought a good Spanish guitar by
the best guitar-maker he could find, while I wished to buy a Spanish
lute. Arias and Ramirez, the two best modern _luthiers_ in Madrid, both
had recently died; we had, however, the address of the widow of Ramirez,
who carried on her husband's business, but faintly in Jan's mind a cloud
hung over the lady's name. He did not trust her. Not she, but Ramirez
had made those superfine instruments. So we were overjoyed to meet Perez
upon the Boulevard Montparnasse soon after our arrival in Paris. Perez
was a friend of ours from the times before the war. He was almost a
mystery man. Native of Malaga, self-styled painter--though he never
showed his work--nobody could tell how he had managed to make a living
during fifteen years of apparently unproductive existence. It is true
that one summer he had disappeared from the quarter, returning late in
November browned by the sun, and had explained that he had been
smuggling in the Pyrenees; but that event was an exception, and for some
months subsequently Perez was obviously well off as a result of his
risky enterprises. Normally, he survived like so many others in the
Quartier Montparnasse, drawing sufficient nourishment (supplemented very
obviously by borrowing) from mysterious sources. But while most of his
confrères in penury had no talents, not even the talent for painting,
Perez did know the guitar. Rumour said that he was one of the best
amateur players of the Jota Arragonesa in Spain. Rumour may have
exaggerated without detracting from the real quality of Perez's
exquisite gift.
We saw a Perez very much polished up by so many years of war. He wore a
clean straw hat, new clothes of the latest cut, a waistcoat of check
with ornamental buttons, patent leather boots with a lacquer which flung
back the rays of the June sun, and heavy owlish eyeglasses of
tortoise-shell fastened with a broad black ribbon. Indeed, so
transformed was he, that it was he who recognized us; and for some
moments we stood trying to pierce through the new respectability, as
though it were through a disguise.
Seated together at the "Rotonde" we exchanged some petty items of news.
Perez had but recently returned from Spain; he had held a small
exhibition, he said, which had provided funds; pictures were selling
well in Spain.... He was delighted to hear of our plan, and thereupon
wrote for us an introduction to a painter, a friend, who lived in
Madrid. "Un homme très serviable," he said, manufacturing a French word
out of one Spanish. Jan then asked his question. "A good guitar-maker in
Spain," said Perez, pinching his lower lip between finger and thumb. He
shook his head slowly.
"A good guitar-maker," repeated Perez. "In Madrid, eh? Frankly, no, I do
not know of one at the moment. And you are going away at once. Tomorrow.
Well, this afternoon I am free, that is good. The best guitar-maker at
the moment lives here, here in Paris. His name is Ramirez. Yes, a
relative of that other Ramirez. He has found a new form for the guitar.
More fine, more powerful. Each one like a genuine _Torres_. You come
with me. I will show you one or two that he made from an old piano which
he pulled to pieces for the wood. Exquisite! And if you like them,
together we will seek out Ramirez and he will make you one. He is very
busy, oh, excessively busy, but he will make you one because he is an
old friend of mine."
So the hot afternoon found us sweating up the slopes of Montmartre.
"First," said Perez, "I will take you to the house of a friend who
possesses two of Ramirez' guitars. One is one of those made from the old
piano. It is marvellous!"
But when we reached the street he could not remember the number. It was
four years, he explained, since last he had been there.
"However," he went on, "not far away is another possessor of such a
guitar; possibly he will be in."
Up the hill we went into streets which became more narrow and more
steep, until at length he led us through a courtyard with pinkwashed
walls, up five flights of polished stairs, to a studio door upon which a
visiting card was pinned:
AUGUSTE LA BRANCHE
_Artiste Peintre_
_Aquafortist_
The door, under Perez's knuckles, sounded hollow and forlorn. We waited
for a while, and Perez was beginning to finger his lip when a faint
shuffle on the other side of the door changed into the noise of locks.
The door swung ajar revealing a small man, with a thin face and tousled
head, clad in pyjamas and a Jaeger dressing-gown which trailed behind
him on the floor. Failing to penetrate to the real Perez, as we also had
failed, he blinked inquiringly at us. A moment of confused explanation
ended with a warm hand-shake. Perez explained our presence and our
purpose; with protestations of apology for his _négligé_ M. La Branche
led us into his studio.
[Illustration]
From the card upon his door we must presume that M. La Branche was both
painter and etcher, and pictures hanging from the walls, and an etching
press almost buried beneath a mound of tossed draperies, were evidences
of the fact. But where he found space either to paint or to etch was a
puzzle. The large studio was crammed with bric-à-brac. Indian tables,
Chinese tables, wicker chairs, lacquer stools, screens, figures in
armour, large vases, birdcages and innumerable articles strewed the
floor, across which narrow lines of bare parquet showed like channels
upon the chart of an estuary. Over the chairs were heaped draperies,
on the tables smaller bric-à-brac crowded together. Upon a sofa thrust
to one side sat a woman methodically sewing at the hem of a long sheet.
She took no notice of us, nor of M. La Branche, but continued her
sewing, careful, however, not to swing her arm too wide for fear of
banging into several guitars and other musical instruments, which
almost disputed possession of the sofa with her.
Having cleared a table and sufficient chairs, M. La Branche gave us _thé
anglais_, by the usual complex French method. Then from amongst his
guitars he selected that made by Ramirez, and sitting down began to
play. It is strange how a man's personality appears in everything he
does. M. La Branche in his paintings was an expert painter rather than
an artist; his etchings, large colour plates, showed a similar skill
with the burin. His music was of the same nature. Everything that a
practiced player should do, he did; his nimble fingers raced up and down
the frets, his tempo and his modulations were impeccable, yet he did not
make music. But we had not come with the intention of hearing music, but
of hearing the qualities and power of the guitar, and this was, perhaps,
more ably shown by the technicalities of M. La Branche than it might
have been in the hands of a more artistic though less able musician.
The shop of Ramirez, the luthier, was down the hill, and to this,
thoroughly satisfied about the excellence of his instruments, we went,
Perez grumbling to us in undertones.
"That fellow La Branche--he does not play Spanish music. No--he comes
from Toulouse. That explains it. It is the talent of the South of
France, all on the top, all lively and excitable and showing off--that
is how it is. Now I tell you, Monsieur and Madame Gordon, just because
of that the Frenchman never will be able to understand our music. You
English are nearer to us. You, when you have acquired ability, will play
our music with much more insight and much more sensibility than that La
Branche."
This comforted us exceedingly, for one day in wrath Modigliani, the
Italian painter, had said that it was mere impertinence for an
Englishman to think that he could understand the subtleties of the music
of Spain.
Ramirez almost makes his guitars out in the street. His workshop was
about ten feet square with a door six feet wide. Here was a piece of
pure Spain, though we could not recognize it (at the moment having no
data), ten feet square, thrust bodily into the lower floor of a French
house. The only light came in from the door, but the door was nearly as
broad as the room. Almost blocking up the entrance, Ramirez, a burly,
blue-jowled Spaniard, with something of the physical construction of a
boxer, was working at delicate shavings of wood. Behind him the wall was
hung with templates, cut from white wood, of the parts of the
instruments he was making, guitars and lauds and bandurrias, strange
instruments which Europe, outside of Spain, scarcely knows. On a shelf
at the back of the small shop were heaped unfinished bandurrias bound
with string, for the glue to become hardened in them. The workshop of
Ramirez was not what we had expected. One is, I think, justified in
expecting a neatness, a delicacy, about the place where fine musical
instruments are made. Had Ramirez been a maker of chairs, or even of
cartwheels, his workshop, though small, would have appeared appropriate;
but that, from this rough place, could come out "the most difficult of
musical instruments to make" disturbed one's sense of suitability.
The greeting which Ramirez gave us touched with doubt the picture which
we had conceived of the amiability of the Spaniard. There was no
cordiality in him. Some of his aloofness cleared away when he had
penetrated through the disguise of a dandy to the real Perez beneath,
but he continued his occupation, and to the statement that we wished him
to make a guitar for Jan he shrugged his fat shoulders. He declared that
he had already too much work.
"Those two instruments, for instance," he said, pointing to two
unfinished guitars elaborately ornamented standing in a corner, "I have
already been nine months over those, and have not had time to finish
them. It is true they are exhibition instruments, for shops, and
therefore have little if any interest for me."
Perez led him on with compliments, thawing away his frostiness gradually
with Jan's admiration for the guitar of M. La Branche. Suddenly Ramirez
put down his tools.
"Look here," he said, "I'll make the Señor a guitar. Three hundred
francs is the price, and it will be finished in three months."
The bargain concluded, Ramirez picked up one of the unfinished
instruments. He handed it to Jan, exhorting him to explore with a finger
the exquisite workmanship of its interior. He rapped on the belly with
his knuckle, and at the sound of its deep musical boom he smiled for the
first time. Ramirez, having thawed, did not freeze up again. He began
explaining the novel shape of his instrument, a shape which had been
worked out for him by a mathematical philosopher. He said that the
guitar was the most difficult of musical instruments to make, requiring
a volume of tone which had to be produced from strings easy to pluck and
finger. A problem very difficult to solve.
"And the guitar I made for you," he said, turning to Perez, "you gave it
to S----?"
"Yes," said Perez.
"See here," said Ramirez, turning to us, "I make a guitar, an excellent
one, one of my best. This fellow comes to see me, he hears the
instrument. He says to me, 'Ramirez, keep that guitar for me, and I will
at once go to work in a French munition factory, and I will work like a
slave, and every week I will send you money until the guitar is paid
for.' And I agree. And he goes and makes aeroplanes, and does honest
work for the first time in his life, I believe, and every week he sends
money to me. And the week it is all paid up he stops work and goes off
with the guitar. And he is crazy about the instrument. And he goes back
to Spain and then he hears S---- playing. He is so enraptured by the
wonderful playing of the man, that he runs home, fetches his guitar, and
thrusts it into S---- 's hands, exclaiming: 'Here is an instrument
worthy of you. It is too good for me, for I am a mere bungler beside
you.' And so he gives away the guitar that he has laboured for. Ah yes,
you villain, I have heard of you."
As we went down the hill, Perez tried to explain away this generosity so
characteristic of his impulsive nature.
"It is not as though I would have played on the instrument again after
having heard S---- touch it. Every time that I wished to play I would
have thought, 'Ah yes, but if only _he_ were playing it and not I.' And
I had to give it to him, or perhaps I would never have been able to play
again."
He asked us to come that evening to a certain small café in the Rue
Campagne Premier; some other Spaniards were to come also and there was
to be playing and singing. We were to come after the legal closing time,
and we were to thump on the shutters.
In the night, in the dark, we rapped upon the rusty iron shutters, and
one by one, like conspirators, were admitted into the dimly-lit café. It
was a small place, characteristic of Paris, a combination of _buvette_
with zinc bar, and cheap restaurant with marble-topped tables. Five
years ago a good meal could be bought here for less than a franc. Behind
the bar bottles and glass vats reached up to the ceiling; upon the
dirty, green, oil-painted walls, cheap almanacs and trivial popular
prints hung, together with excellent drawings and sketches, presented to
Madame by her clients. One by one the _invités_ slipped in. Madame and
her two girl waitresses laughed and giggled at the kitchen door, while
the _patron_, grey-moustached, hollow-eyed and cadaverous, uncorked the
bottles of wine behind the bar.
Here again for several hours the Spaniards re-created Spain. Perez is a
player of temperament. Half of his skill and art he appears to suck from
his audience. Thus at first he plays but indifferently well; but any
music will rouse a crowd of Spaniards. To the growing excitement Perez
responds, playing the better for it, thus creating more enthusiasm, and
these interchanges continue, until he reaches the limit of his ability.
But he is so sensitive to his audience that one indifferent person can
take the edge off all his power. This night there was no one
unresponsive. The playing of Perez became more and more brilliant. With
his nails be rasped deep chords from his responsive instrument; to and
fro he beat the strings in the remorseless rhythm of Jota Arragonesa. In
the dimly lit café the dark figures and the sallow faces of the
Spaniards were crowded about him in an irregular circle. "Olé! Olé!"
they cried, and clapped their hands in time with the music. The air
within the café throbbed and pulsated with the music. "Mais, c'est très
bien," exclaimed Madame at intervals from her corner. "C'est très
amusant, hein?" Two of the younger men were murmuring to the waitresses
and were making them titter.
"Come," exclaimed Perez at last, "enough of this piece playing. Let us
have a song. Vamos! who will sing?"
But something, possibly my presence, deterred the Spaniards from
singing. They were shy as a group of schoolboys. One at last began to
chant in a high quavering falsetto, but before the first half of his
_copla_ was ended he broke down into a laugh of hysterical shyness.
"Why then," cried Perez, "I'll have to sing myself, and Heaven knows
I've got no voice."
The Spaniard believes that any singing is better than no singing. One of
his chief pursuits in life is that of happiness--"_allègre_" he calls
it. This _allègre_ is produced not by perfect results but by evidence
of good intentions. He would rather have a bad player who plays from his
heart than a good player who plays for his pocket. Any singing, then, so
long as it is of the right nature, will suffice, no matter what its
musical effect. Perez's singing had _allègre_, but no music. He lowed
like a calf, rising up into strange throaty hoarseness like a barrow
merchant who has been crying his goods all day, and descending into dim
growls of deep notes. But even he at last tired; and after Madame had
been yawning for some while, after the last bottle of wine had been
drained of its last drops, we slipped out one by one into the moonlit
streets of Paris and said our farewells on the Boulevard.