The Old Man and the Sí

Being Ramón’s daughter you get used to certain things: really bad math jokes (and the concept that “math” and “joke” can even be in the same sentence); specific other jokes being told at least four times a year at family gatherings (Guy sits down at a restaurant and says, “Waiter, I’d like my coffee without any cream.” The waiter says, “I’m sorry sir, we’re out of cream. You’ll have to have it without something else.”); the sudden drop in connection with his brain when he’s done with a subject, which leads him to say, “On that” before pausing and hanging up the phone (“So anyway, dad, let me tell you more about my problem.” “Yes, so, on that…“ “The electrician called and said you have to rewire the house to get it up to code.” “On that…“ “This family issue is going on, it’s a major pain in the ass and it requires your input.” “On… that…“). Hello? Hello? Dad?

You get used to his infrequent but memorable cooking (see http://siftingthedivide.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/chef-joan/ for his culinary history).

By far his best dish is store-bought Syrian bread he toasts directly on the burner. It’s actually pretty good. He calls it Syrian Toast. It’s got a name. And it’s toast. With nothing on it. Well sometimes butter. Recently he learned to make Spanish Toast, meaning grating tomatoes, garlic, olive oil and a little vinegar and salt together and topping toasted bread with that. That’s good too.

You get used to his explaining in great detail why there are two tides a day, which requires his arms and hands moving up and down like a celestial taffy puller.

You learn to leap when you hear, “Oops, oopsoops” because it means he’s just screwed up a plumbing project and water is gushing everywhere, or he’s just made a mistake in the reassembling of an electronics “fix,” burning out a previously-warrantied mother board, or perhaps he’s just accidentally shot down Sputnik.

Most especially you get used to the phone calls and their enthusiastic, utterly random and out of the blue opening words.

I’ve had it with Comcast. Let me tell you how I want you to cheat those sons of bitches.

I try to be cynical, but I can’t keep up.

I have some sad news. The Red Baron has died (a 12 year-old Subaru), but I got a new car. I’ve named it the Silver Fuck.

Next November I want to travel down the Amazon. Did I ever tell you about our guide when we were in Budapest?

I’ve learned to dread one day at a time.

I need to find a forger.

This last was, oddly, not a total surprise. For as long as I can remember he’s been searching for the portrait of my great-grandfather Wenceslao, painted in 1938 by an artist named Ignacio Zuloaga y Zabaleta, a guy somewhat famous in his time. But let me take dad’s words from a recent letter to explain it:

My grandfather, Wenceslao Alonso Velasquez, was a small businessman/farmer in Lerín, Navarra, Spain, one of the most catholic regions of a Catholic country, population 2300 at its peak, and asparagus capital of the world . He was born in 1850, and in the 1870s he joined whatever misguided youth wanted to a) throw over whoever was reigning and b) replace him with a Charles of a different branch of the Bourbons. Them youth were called Carlistas, and wore red berets.

He was married twice. I don’t know how many children he had with his first wife, but at least one wound up in Argentina, where I did not ever meet him. He married his second wife, Clementa García, with whom he had at least four offspring, maybe more, and with whom he got to celebrate his diamond anniversary.

Along came the Spanish Civil War. By that time my father Amado, a successful linguist and philologist, had married an English woman Joan (known by some from Lerín as “juana la loca” because she put her child (me) out to sun in the winter air instead of smothering him inside. This was in 1931, when my parents were visiting from Argentina and I was just born.)

In 1931 the Spaniards overthrew the monarchy, and installed a Republic. All of Navarra was outraged, but my father Amado was nonetheless named Cultural Attache, for the Republic,  to the Spanish Embassy in Buenos Aires.

In 1936 civil war broke out. By then Wenceslao was the last surviving Carlista, so Franco commissioned  Zuloaga to paint him, for propaganda purposes. Wenceslao went around collecting foodstuffs and materials for the bad guys. Franco apparently gave the painting to Mussolini’s son in law Count Ciano, as miserable a human being as has walked the earth. Zuloaga gave my grandfather a signed photograph of the painting, signed by Ciano as well. (In 1944 or so Ciano tried to depose Mussolini. He failed, and Mussolini had him shot.)

After the war ended, and my father had been hired by Harvard, we all went to Spain to see the relatives that we had not seen in 15 or more years. There, in 1947, I met Wenceslao, whom I remember has being very short, but with very large hands. 

Copies of the photograph of the painting were passed around, with stories (false, I’m sure) that Franco had promised the painting (6 ft x 4.5 ft) to Wenceslao.

Fast forward. At one point my mother, who wanted to know where the painting was, wrote to Edna Mussolini di Ciano, who sent back a snapshot with a note saying that “the old man kept her company, and followed her with his eyes.

Wency died in 1950, a few months short of his 100th, supposedly from pneumonia he got from riding 3d class to Madrid, to help a young couple get an apartment.”

My father and Joan searched for decades for the painting (Juana la Loca earned her name in many ways that had nothing to do with putting a baby outside in the winter, by the way, though her baby-raising chops did include adding a fair amount of brandy to my bottle when I was an infant to “help the child sleep,”and insisting that putting parsley on a baby’s bottom cured colic, causing me to be well-garnished in my first few months of life). Sometimes they called in experts, like my cousin Melissa who specializes in art professionally, or querying the dealers at Christie’s and Sotheby’s, but even when they’d find it the elusive portrait escaped them, hidden by private buyers unwilling to communicate even through auction houses or be known to the family. A few were willing to send a photograph, and over the years we got quite a collection ranging from black and white to Polaroid orange and pink, to a poor-quality color shot from Christie’s with a stripe of reflection  going down the side.

But then his call for a forger, which I posted on Facebook, which led directly to my friends Joice and Merlyn, and Merlyn’s father Dennis Liberty, an equally matched character ten years younger than dad and a remarkable painter. Here is Dennis’s blog page about the event http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=d456334acb288f53975e78f2a&id=f99b462d89&e=33ef188e93 **

With much contribution from the Village Liberty (Merlyn and her mother Lou), the Wency Forgery Project became the focus of the ensuing 6 months. Dennis’s exacting eye for style, color, and flavor made him the perfect, brilliant forger (must remember to write “forger” so as not to get anyone in trouble); Dad’s boundless enthusiasm and interest the perfect patron. They were quite a team.

And since then the calls have been in the vein of: Did you see the latest email? Isn’t it fantastic? 

I’m going to Albekurk to visit Lou and Dennis. (Why a man raised speaking Spanish would insist on ignoring all rules of the language and pronounce Albuquerque “Albekurk” is beyond me.) 

Emails have become group missives: It’s really looking great! The bump and mark on Wency’s nose, my father once told me, was the result of getting hacked with an adze, and having gunpowder applied as a disinfectant. I was told this following my crashing into a glass door, and getting my nose cut, sown, and reopened a few times again. So for a while I had the same bump and mark. (Buenos Aires was not a SafeKids location in the ’40s, and I don’t know what he’s talking about – he still has the bump on his nose.)

It was indeed lovely to meet you all, and feel that I’ve made new friends. I hope there won’t be any custody arrangement fight about Wency. He is old, and mean looking, but we have a nice comfy cage for him.

And then, last week, “He’s home.” 

After more than half a century of searching, of three generations of international telegrams and calls and letters and emails, Wenceslao has been returned to his family, at 1/2 scale perhaps, but with all his brilliant colors and enigmatic smile, seated on the mountains of Navarra, large hands resting on the over-large cloth coat while the war burns behind him.

So dad, I said, What are you going to focus on now that you’ve got your white whale?

“Well, I’ve made some full-sized giclees,* and I sent one to my father’s library in Lérin, and one to the Zuloaga Museum in Madrid. Now I want to see the original hanging next to the forgery!”

I see. So the quest isn’t over then? And how is it finally having him home?

Oh it’s fantastic. Though Dorothy says the old man follows her everywhere with his eyes.