“The sale of cats”: Gustavo Adolfo Becquer; story and analysis

“The sale of cats”: Gustavo Adolfo Becquer; story and analysis.

The sale of cats (The Sale of Cats) is a fantastic story by the Spanish writer Gustavo Adolfo Becquer (1836-1870), originally published in the newspaper El Contemporaneous, in November 1862, and then republished in the 1871 anthology: Leyendas.

The sale of catsone of Gustavo Adolfo Becquer’s great stories, develops two stories in one, and both have the melancholic charm of someone who longs for the land of his childhood, already changed forever.

The sale of cats.
The sale of cats, Gustavo Adolfo Becquer (1836-1870)

In Seville, and in the middle of the road that goes to the convent of San Jerónimo from the Puerta de la Macarena, there is among other famous ventorrillos one that, due to the place in which it is placed and the special circumstances that occur in it, can be said to be It was, if it is not already, the clearest and most characteristic of all the Andalusian ventorrillos.

Imagine a little house white as the snow field, with its roof of reddish tiles, some of which are greenish-black, and among which an endless number of dandelions and mignonette bushes grow. A wooden shed bathes the door lintel in shadow, on whose sides there are two brick and mortar supports. Embedded in the wall that breaks several small windows opened at whim to give light to the interior, and of which some are lower and others higher, this one in a quadrangular shape, the other imitating a mullioned window or a skylight, you can see from time to time some stakes and iron rings used to tie horses.

A very old vine, which twists its blackish trunks between the framework of wood that supports it, dressing them with branches and wide green leaves, covers the stage like a canopy, which is made up of three pine benches, half a dozen cattail chairs. rickety and up to six or seven lame tables made of poorly joined boards.

A honeysuckle climbs up one side of the house, clinging to the cracks in the walls, until it reaches the roof, from whose eaves hang some guides that sway with the air, resembling floating canopies of vegetables. At the foot of the other runs a reed fence, marking the limits of a small garden that looks like a basket of reeds overflowing with flowers. The crowns of two corpulent trees that rise behind the ventorrillo form the dark background against which their white chimneys stand out, completing the decoration with the orchard fences, full of pitas and blackberries, and the brooms that grow at the edge of the water. , and the Guadalquivir that slowly moves away dragging its crooked current between those wild banks until it reaches the foot of the old convent of San Jerónimo, which appears above the thick olive groves that surround it and draws in darkness the black silhouette of its towers on a blue and transparent sky.

Imagine this landscape animated by a multitude of figures of men, women, children and animals, forming groups that are more picturesque and characteristic; here the innkeeper, plump and red, sitting in the sun on a low chair, unraveling the tobacco in his hands to roll a cigarette and with the paper in his mouth; there, a reggatón from the Macarena who sings with his eyes narrowed and accompanying himself with a guitar while others keep time with him with their palms or hitting the tables with their glasses; Further on, a mob of girls, with their thousand-colored foam scarves and a whole pot of carnations in their hair, who play the tambourine, and scream, and laugh, and talk loudly while they push the hanging swing like crazy. between two trees, and the young men from the ventorrillo who come and go with trays of manzanilla and plates of olives, and the bands of townspeople who swarm along the road; two drunks who argue with a nice man who breaks down when passing a good girl, a cock that crows proudly fluffing itself on the fences of the corral, a dog that barks at the children who harass him with sticks and stones, the oil that boils and jumps in the frying pan where they fry the fish, the crack of the whips of the carriage drivers who arrive raising a cloud of dust, the noise of singing, castanets, laughter, voices, whistles and guitars and banging on the tables, and clapping and explosions of jars breaking, and a thousand and a thousand strange and discordant rumors that form a joyful hubbub impossible to describe.

Imagine all this on a warm and serene afternoon, on the afternoon of one of the most beautiful days in Andalusia, where they are always so beautiful, and you will have an idea of ​​the spectacle that was offered to my eyes the first time, guided by its fame , I went to visit that famous ventorrillo. This was many years ago, ten or twelve at least. I was there as if outside my natural center. Starting with my dress and ending with the amazed expression on my face, everything about me was in harmony with that picture of frank and boisterous joy.

It seemed to me that people, as I passed by, turned their faces to look at me with the displeasure that one looks at an importunate person. Not wanting to attract attention or have my presence become the object of more or less concealed ridicule, I sat down next to the door of the ventorrillo, asked for something to drink, which I did not drink, and, when everyone had forgotten about my strange appearance, I took out I took a piece of paper from the drawing bag that I had with me, I sharpened a pencil and began to look for a characteristic type to copy and keep as a memory of that scene and that day.

Of course, my eyes fell on one of the girls who formed a happy circle around the swing. She was tall, thin, slightly dark, with sleepy, large, black eyes, and hair blacker than her eyes. While I was making the drawing, a group of men, among whom there was one who strummed the guitar with a lot of air, sang in chorus songs alluding to the personal items, the little secrets of love, the inclinations or the stories of jealousy and disdain of the women. girls who were entertained around the swing, songs to which they in turn responded with others no less funny, spicy and light. The dark, slender and decisive girl, whom she had chosen as a model, carried the voice among the women and composed the couplets and said them accompanied by the noise of clapping and the laughter of her companions, while the dresser seemed to be the leader of the young men and the one who stood out among all of them for his grace and his casual wit.

For my part, I didn’t need much time to know that there was some feeling of affection between them, which was revealed in their songs, full of transparent allusions and loving phrases. When I finished my work, it was beginning to get dark. The two lanterns of the bell altarpiece had already been lit in the cathedral tower, and their lights looked like the fiery eyes of that giant of mortar and brick that dominates the entire city. The groups were dissolving little by little and getting lost along the road in the mist of twilight silvered by the moon that was beginning to be drawn against the purple and dark background of the sky. The girls walked away together and singing, and their Argentine voices gradually weakened until they were confused with the other indistinct and distant rumors that trembled in the air. Everything ended at the same time: the day, the bustle, the animation and the party, and all that remained was an echo in the ear and in the soul, like a very soft vibration, like a sweet drowsiness similar to that experienced when wake up from a pleasant dream.

After the last people had disappeared, I folded my drawing, put it in my wallet, slapped the waiter, paid the small expense I had incurred, and was about to walk away, when I felt someone gently stop me by the arm. It was the boy with the guitar that I had already noticed before and who while I was drawing looked at me a lot and with a certain air of curiosity, but I had not noticed that, after the joke was over, he sneaked up to the place where I was in order to to see what I was doing looking so insistently at the woman in whom he seemed to be interested.

“Sir,” he said to me, with an accent that he tried to soften as much as possible, “I’m going to ask you a favor.”

-A favor! —I exclaimed without understanding what his intentions could be—. You say that, if it’s in my power, it’s a done deal.

—Do you want to give me that painting you made?

Upon hearing his last words I could not help but remain perplexed for a while. He missed, on the one hand, the request, which was still quite strange, and on the other, the tone, which could not be clearly said whether it was a threat or a plea. He must have understood my doubt, and he was quick to add:

—I ask this of you for the health of your mother, for the woman you love most in this world, if you love any. Instead, ask me for everything I can do in my poverty.

I didn’t know what to answer to avoid the commitment. Almost, almost I would have preferred it to come in the form of a chimera, in exchange for preserving the sketch of that woman, whose sight had so impressed me; But, whether it was a surprise at the moment, or whether I don’t know how to say no to anything, I opened my wallet, took out the paper and handed it to him without saying a word. Refer to the boy’s phrases of gratitude, his exclamations when he looked at the drawing again in the light of the inn’s reverberation, the care with which he folded it to keep it in his belt, the offers he made to me and the hyperbolic praise with which he praised my luck. If he had found what he called a temperate and clean young man, it would be a very difficult task, if not impossible. I will only say that since between them it had become completely dark, and I wanted it not, he insisted on accompanying me to the Macarena gate, and he gave it so much effort that I finally decided that we would take the road together. The path is very short; but while it lasted he found a way to tell me from start to finish the whole story of his love.

The inn where the function had taken place belonged to her father, who had promised her, when she got married, a garden that bordered the house and that also belonged to him. As for the girl who was the object of her affection, whom she painted for me with the most vivid colors and the most picturesque phrases, she told me that her name was Amparo, that she had grown up in her house since she was very little and He didn’t know who her parents were. All this and a hundred other details of little interest she told me along the way. When we reached the gates of the city, she gave me a strong handshake, she offered herself to me again and left singing a song whose echoes spread far away in the silence of the night. I stayed for a while watching him go. Her happiness seemed contagious and I felt happy, with a strange and nameless joy, with a joy, so to speak, of reflection. He continued singing as hard as he could. One of his songs said like this:

Soul mate,
look how pretty she was;
she looked like the Virgin
of Consolación de Utrera.

When his voice began to fade, I heard in the gusts of the breeze another thin and vibrant one that sounded even further away. It was she, who was waiting for him impatiently… A few days later I left Seville, and they passed…