Border of a Dream: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado (Spanish Edition) by Antonio Machado Read Free Book Online Page B

financial resources for our immediate needs. Corpus Barga received a sum of money from a friend in Perpignan and returned toCebère to share this among his companions. With this same help I was able to go to Paris to seek aid from the Spanish embassy. The ambassador, Dr. Marcelino Pascua, with great urgency, cabled money to Machado at Collioure, so that, contrary to some reports, it can be said that Machado was not in financial straits during the last weeks of his life in France.

    In the vehicle for most of the trip Machado held his mother on his lap. She was in her late eighties, frail, and confused. The chaotic moment of reaching the border is also described by Corpus Barga, who had found the Machados at the crossing point: “Antonio, ever resigned and silent, contemplated his mother with her fine white hair stuck to her temples by the rain that slid down her beautiful face like a bright veil of tears,” 13 Immediately after the frontier, the road curved high to the slope of Balitres and down to the French coastal village of Cerbère, where the family spent the first night in France in winter cold and rain in an abandoned railroad car left on a dead rail. There Don Antonio, already asthmatic, caught cold, a bronchitis from which he was not to recover. The next morning, the 28th of January, accompanied by Barga, they took the train to Collioure.
    “Antonio Machado arrived at Collioure on January 29, 1939, drenched by a torrential rain. He had walked a long way and was so exhausted that he was obliged to take a taxi simply to cross the square andreach the hotel.” 14 José helped his brother make it to the Bougnol-Quintana Hotel, and Corpus Barga carried their mother in his arms. She weighed not more than a little girl. She kept asking, “Will we soon get to Sevilla?” 15 They were treated very well in the hotel, given hot food and drinks, and for the first time since they left Barcelona, a week earlier, they slept in a bed.
    Most of the days that followed, Machado spent in his room, writing letters and gazing out of the window. As for meals downstairs, the family sat alone in a corner, almost hidden; in the first days the two brothers never came to eat at the same time. When questioned it came out they had only one clean shirt between them and they were taking turns wearing it for meals. They had arrived with no French money, only worthless Spanish currency. Later funds were to come from the Republican embassy, permitting them to buy cigarettes and writing material, and to take care of the hotel. Antonio’s French friends also worried about Antonio’s clothes, which were torn and shabby after the escape from Spain. If he died, how could he be buried in a decent suit?
    Antonio was able to go out on one occasion for a longer walk down to the beach of this Mediterranean village. Three decades earlier in Collioure, in the winter of 1909-10, George Braque and his compatriot Picasso invented cubism, and much later Matisse went there to paint and find his cutout sun. Most of Antonio’s short walks were up the narrow alley by the hotel, around the cemetery, and back to the Hotel Quintana, sometimes stopping at a store to chat in his good French with new acquaintances. In his memoirs José draws a sensitive and lovely picture of Machado and the sea:

    A few days before his death and in his infinite love for nature, he told me before the mirror, while he tried in vain to straighten out his unruly hair, “Let’s look at the sea.”

    This was his first and last outing. We set out for the beach. There we sat down on one of the boats that was resting on the sand.

    The noon sun gave almost no heat. It was at that unique moment when one might say that his body buried its shadow under his feet.

    It was windy, but he took off his hat that he fastened with one hand to his knee while his other hand rested, in its own way, on his cane. So he remained absorbed, silent, before the constant coming and going of the waves, untiring,