Some of the models squealed. The crowd laughed and pummeled each other a bit. Ricardo quietly raised his pants and leaned against the wall.
“Was that quaint enough?” he said.
“Oh, my God!” muttered the photographer.
“Let’s go down to the docks,” said his assistant.
“I think I’ll go there too.” Ricardo smiled.
“Good God, what can we do with the idiot?” whispered the photographer.
“Buy him off!”
“I tried that!”
“You didn’t go high enough.”
“Listen, you run get a policeman. I’ll put a stop to this.”
The assistant ran. Everyone stood around smoking cigarettes nervously, eying Ricardo. A dog came by and briefly made water against the wall.
“Look at that!” cried Ricardo. “What art! What a pattern! Quick, before the sun dries it!”
The cameraman turned his back and looked out to sea.
The assistant came rushing along the street. Behind him, a native policeman strolled quietly. The assistant had to stop and run back to urge the policeman to hurry. The policeman assured him with a gesture, at a distance, that the day was not yet over and in time they would arrive at the scene of whatever disaster lay ahead.
The policeman took up a position behind the two cameramen. “What seems to be the trouble?”
“That man up there. We want him removed.”
“That man up there seems only to be leaning against a wall,” said the officer.
“No, no, it’s not the leaning, he— Oh hell,” said the cameraman. “The only way to explain is to show you. Take your pose dear.”
The girl posed. Ricardo posed, smiling casually.
“Hold it!”
The girl froze.
Ricardo dropped his pants.
Click went the camera.
“Ah,” said the policeman.
“Got the evidence right in this old camera if you need it!” said the cameraman.
“Ah,” said the policeman, not moving, hand to chin. “So.” He surveyed the scene like an amateur photographer himself. He saw the model with the flushed, nervous marble face, the cobbles, the wall, and Ricardo. Ricardo magnificently smoking a cigarette there in the noon sunlight under the blue sky, his pants where a man’s pants rarely are.
“Well, officer?” said the cameraman, waiting.
“Just what,” said the policeman, taking off his cap and wiping his dark brow, “do you want me to do?”
“Arrest that man! Indecent exposure!”
“Ah,” said the policeman.
“Well?” said the cameraman.
The crowd murmured. All the nice lady models were looking out at the sea gulls and the ocean.
“That man up there against the wall,” said the officer, “I know him. His name is Ricardo Reyes.”
“Hello, Esteban!” called Ricardo.
The officer called back at him, “Hello, Ricardo.”
They waved at each other.
“He’s not doing anything I can see,” said the officer.
“What do you mean?” asked the cameraman. “He’s as naked as a rock. It’s immoral!”
“That man is doing nothing immoral. He’s just standing there,” said the policeman. “Now if he were doing something with his hands or body, something terrible to view, I would act upon the instant. However, since he is simply leaning against the wall, not moving a single limb or muscle, there is nothing wrong.”
“He’s naked, naked!” screamed the cameraman.
“I don’t understand.” The officer blinked.
“You just don’t go around naked, that’s all!”
“There are naked people and naked people,” said the officer. “Good and bad. Sober and with drink in them. I judge this one to be a man with no drink in him, a good man by reputation; naked, yes, but doing nothing with this nakedness in any way to offend the community.”
“What are you, his brother? What are you, his confederate?” said the cameraman. It seemed that at any moment he might snap and bite and bark and woof and race around in circles under the blazing sun. “Where’s the justice? What’s going on here? Come on, girls, we’ll go somewhere else!”
“France,” said Ricardo.
“What!” The photographer whirled.
“I said France, or Spain,” suggested Ricardo. “Or Sweden. I have seen some nice pictures of walls in Sweden. But not many cracks in them. Forgive my suggestion.”
‘We’ll get pictures in spite of you!” The cameraman shook his camera, his fist.
“I will be there,” said Ricardo. “Tomorrow, the next day, at the bullfights, at the market, anywhere, everywhere you go I go, quietly, with grace. With dignity, to perform my necessary task.”
Looking at him, they knew it was true.
“Who are you—who in hell do you think you are?” cried the photographer.
“I have been waiting for you to ask me,” said Ricardo. “Consider me. Go home and think of me. As long as there is one man like me in a town of ten thousand, the world will go on. Without me, all would be chaos.”
“Good night, nurse,” said the photographer, and the entire swarm of ladies, hatboxes, cameras, and make-up kits retreated down the street toward the docks. “Time out for lunch, dears. We’ll figure something later!”
Ricardo watched them go, quietly. He had not moved from his position. The crowd still looked upon him and smiled.
Now, Ricardo thought, I will walk up the street to my house, which has paint peeling from the door where I have brushed it a thousand times in passing, and I shall walk over the stones I have worn down in forty-six years of walking, and I shall run my hand over the crack in the wall of my own house, which is the crack made by the earthquake in 1930.
I remember well the night, us all in bed, Tomas as yet unborn, and Maria and I much in love, and thinking it was our love which moved the house, warm and great in the night; but it was the earth trembling, and in the morning, that crack in the wall.
And I shall climb the steps to the lacework-grille balcony of my father’s house, which grillwork he made with his own hands, and I shall eat the food my wife serves me on the balcony, with the books near at hand.
And my son Tomas, whom I created out of whole cloth, yes, bed sheets, let us admit it, with my good wife. And we shall sit eating and talking, not photographs, not backdrops, not paintings, not stage furniture, any of us. But actors, all of us, very fine actors indeed.
As if to second this last thought, a sound startled his ear. He was in the midst of solemnly, with great dignity and grace, lifting his pants to belt them around his waist, when he heard this lovely sound. It was like the winging of soft doves in the air. It was applause.
The small crowd, looking up at him, enacting the final scene of the play before the intermission for lunch, saw with what beauty and gentlemanly decorum he was elevating his trousers. The applause broke like a brief wave upon the shore of the nearby sea.
Ricardo gestured and smiled to them all.
On his way home up the hill he shook hands with the dog that had watered the wall.
The end
