Youth and Egolatry | Page 5

because
it would serve as a warning. Neither do I bring a fistful of truths in my
hand, to scatter broadcast. What, then, have I to say? And why do I
write about myself? Assuredly, to no useful purpose.
The owner of a house is sometimes asked:

"Is there anything much locked up in that room?"
"No, nothing but old rubbish," he replies promptly.
But one day the owner opens the room, and then he finds a great store
of things which he had not remembered, all of them covered with dust;
so he hauls them out and generally they prove to be of no service at all.
This is precisely what I have done.
These pages, indeed, are a spontaneous exudation. But are they sincere?
Absolutely sincere? It is not very probable. The moment we sit for a
photographer, instinctively we dissemble and compose our features.
When we talk about ourselves, we also dissemble.
In as short a book as this the author is able to play with his mask and to
fix his expression. Throughout the work of an entire lifetime, however,
which is of real value only when it is one long autobiography, deceit is
impossible, because when the writer is least conscious of it, he reveals
himself.

I
FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS
The Bad Man of Itzea
When I first came to live in this house at Vera del Bidasoa, I found that
the children of the district had taken possession of the entryway and the
garden, where they misbehaved generally. It was necessary to drive
them away little by little, until they flew off like a flock of sparrows.
My family and I must have seemed somewhat peculiar to these children,
for one day, when one little fellow caught sight of me, he took refuge in
the portal of his house and cried out:
"Here comes the bad man of Itzea!"

And the bad man of Itzea was I.
Perhaps this child had heard from his sister, and his sister had heard
from her mother, and her mother had heard from the sexton's wife, and
the sexton's wife from the parish priest, that men who have little
religion are very bad; perhaps this opinion did not derive from the
priest, but from the president of the Daughters of Mary, or from the
secretary of the Enthronization of the Sacred Heart of Jesus; perhaps
some of them had read a little book by Father Ladron de Guevara
entitled, _Novelists, Good and Bad_, which was distributed in the
village the day that I arrived, and which states that I am irreligious, a
clerophobe, and quite shameless. Whether from one source or another,
the important consideration to me was that there was a bad man in Itzea,
and that that bad man was I.
To study and make clear the instincts, pride, and vanities of the bad
man of Itzea is the purpose of this book.

HUMBLE AND A WANDERER
Some years ago, I cannot say just how many, probably twelve or
fourteen, during the days when I led, or thought I led, a nomadic life,
happening to be in San Sebastian, I went to visit the Museum with the
painter Regoyos. After seeing everything, Soraluce, the director,
indicated that I was expected to inscribe my name in the visitor's
register, and after I had done so, he said:
"Place your titles beneath."
"Titles!" I exclaimed. "I have none."
"Then put down what you are. As you see, the others have done the
same."
I looked at the book. True enough; there was one signature, So-and-So,
and beneath, "Chief of Administration of the Third Class and Knight of
Charles III"; another, Somebody Else, and beneath was written

"Commander of the Battalion of Isabella the Catholic, with the Cross of
Maria Cristina."
Then, perhaps slightly irritated at having neither titles nor honours
(burning with an anarchistic and Christian rancour, as Nietzsche would
have it), I jotted down a few casual words beneath my signature:
"Pio Baroja, a humble man and a wanderer."
Regoyos read them and burst out laughing.
"What an idea!" exclaimed the director of the Museum, as he closed the
volume.
And there I remained a humble man and a wanderer, overshadowed by
Chiefs of Administration of all Classes, Commanders of all Branches
of the Service, Knights of all kinds of Crosses, rich men returned from
America, bankers, etc., etc.
Am I a humble man and a wanderer? Not a bit of it! There is more
literary phantasy in the phrase than there is truth. Of humility I do not
now, nor have I ever possessed more than a few rather Buddhistic
fragments; nor am I a wanderer either, for making a few insignificant
journeys does not authorize one to call oneself a wanderer. Just as I put
myself down