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255
auricula
crossed the Spanish border in
1917 by way of a remote
beach near Cerbère and then
proceeded along the coast
until they reached Puerto de
la Selva on the bay’s innermost
point, where they huddled
together in the second of the
watercolor s , a rather
unf ini shed ver s ion of
Bouteilles et fruit
, until
sometime in October 1919, at
which point they headed back
over the border in search of
the originals. Meanwhile, the
three paintings had been sent
to Vollard, whereupon the
ears set a course for the
master’s studio in Aix, which
they entered through the high
crack in 1927, twenty years
old, now with only
Les
Baigneuses
intact. For some
reason or another, which
could as well be Spain’s
hermetic road signs as inertia
or the rotating ear th’s
centri fugal force, most
Spanish ears headed south.
Portugal, however, did not
adopt Spain’s wait-and-see
attitude to the war, but
instead cast itself eagerly and
superfluously into the fray.
Mobilization was already
creating strong unrest among
that country’s ears, causing
many to pull up and most to
head for less agreeable,
though safer pastures. Yet
hardly had the cannon booms
from the northern battlefields
began to sound in Portuguese
newspapers, which, in all
haste, had to requisition larger
fonts and drop the verb’s
active tense from all headlines
and captions, when hosts of
terrified ears began to flee
south toward less literate
regions. Up until 1917 most
ears stuck it out, holing up in
ana l phabet i c f armer s ’
outhouses and hay barracks,