The minister’s knickers

Without knowing why, Serrador likes the vaudevilles. They soothe him with their small stages, their dancing girls, their chanteuses, their pornography, their yellowish half-light, their aura, their heat, their tunes, their smell, their sweaty vapours–a transplanted barracks of tobacco and armpit odours. The workers come to enjoy themselves, work on their shoulders, dust on their backs. The floor of the theatre fills with the recently washed, who are doing very nicely indeed; people visit the halls by chance, enter, and leave without rhyme or reason. In the aisles there’ll be someone who’ll wander around for five minutes, someone looking for a friend, someone who’s come to test the air and, because it doesn’t take his fancy, leaves and continues on a tour of neighbouring establishments. There are shopkeepers who come every day to have a coffee and read the Noticiero Universal [a Barcelona daily] in peace–swish glasses, tight arses–from time to time casting a glance at the show; a few soldiers; more sailors; poseurs who wander around the stage with an eye on the main chance; dockers; the unemployed; respectable couples from the barrio; retired ladies with their sugar daddies, looking down with complicit superiority on the flock of artists gathered in the proscenium boxes, if they are free; in the background, separated by a curtain, a dark screen, or a window, silent men play whist and other card games, their chips dirty, their greasy cards well shuffled: they are all sharps and play a straight game; to the left or the right of the bar at the far end they serve the dark-skinned waiters, teaspoons the only sound. The people are split into two: the regulars and the rest; the former are in the majority and are joined by roamers on a to-and-fro from a night out on the girls.

Staged pornography is simple and comes in two kinds: the first consists of showing what you’ve got–these poor women have nothing else, and what they have belongs as much to any old fun-loving, lovesick gentleman as to them–and usually occupies the first part of the show; the second tries to insinuate cunningly, manipulating with that old nudge nudge, wink wink, causing unbearable suffering or divine pleasure. An artiste who combines these two styles is worth her weight in gold, and her name will shine incandescent from magazine covers and be allotted half a meter on billboards. Showing what you’ve got has its ups and its downs and is dependent on politics, on the governor and his police force. The Republic is chaste and it has been necessary to resort to subterfuge to enable the show to go on; under Anguera de Sojo’s rule the poor dears invented knickers with artificial fluff which permitted the exercise of passions within the bounds of the law. Known as “Anguera de Sojo’s Trousers,” government intemperance prohibited them as well. Ingenuity is rarely rewarded by the State.

The show begins at half past nine and lasts till half past twelve, which is when the super-tango (artistes and gentlemen only!) starts. Benches are cleared quickly from the floor while waiters and the doorman sweep up peanut shells, newspapers left behind by the crowd, a dust cloud; butts are collected to make English tobacco; spit is covered with sawdust. The florist puts her affairs in order, the orchestra moves from one side of the hall to the other. In vaudevilles of little account this time of life is usually one of solitude and sadness; to the burble of a loaded drunk, waiters chat around a table; cabaret girls and artistes spend time in the toilet; one takes off her shoes and dozes on a divan; another is relaxing at the bar. In some dark theatre box, voices can be heard: “I tell you, these stockings cost me four pesetas at Vehils!”

One, two, three pairs dance; afterwards they whisper round a table, seeing if they can swindle an hour from the floor manager. The tired or agitated young man goes to talk to the artistic director to ask him if he’ll let the artiste go before five in the morning; normally he manages to get half an hour, just so long as no precedent is set.

Towards half past ten the authorities’ secret agents appear, bells ring, and all the artistes put on the knickers. The public, as confounded as anyone, scream, shout, protest; the artistes retire without waving adieu.

“Get lost! We want to see it!”
Those just entering wait quietly by the door for a moment.
“I swear to you they showed them yesterday!” says a lad.
“We’ll come back tomorrow, maybe we’ll get lucky then,” says the other. And they leave. The doorman smugly watches them pass.