Three years ago I had not the grey hairs that you now see, and was
thirty-seven years of age, though I felt but twenty-two. I do not
know precisely when my youth passed from me, and it is hard for me to
realize that it has reached its end. People have told you that I was
one of the gadabouts of passion. That is false. I respected Love and I
never degraded her. Scarcely ever have I caressed a woman whom I did
not passionately love. If I were to name or number these loves to you
you would be surprised for they were but a few. I easily remember that
I have never loved a blonde. I have always ignored those pale objects
of worship. What is furthermore true, is that, for me, love has not
been a mere pleasure or pastime. It has been my very life. If I were
to take out of my life all the thoughts and actions that had the woman
for their sole end, there would remain nothing but emptiness--space.
This much said, I may now recount to you what I know of Concha Perez.
I go first to three years and a half ago, and winter-time. I returned
from France, a bitter cold journey too, one twenty-sixth of December,
in the express that passes the bridge of the Bidassoa.
The snow, already very thick at Biarritz and Saint Sebastian, rendered
almost impracticable the traversing of the Guipuzcoa. The train stopped
two hours at Zumarraga, for snow to be cleared away. Later an avalanche
stopped us for three hours. All night this snow trouble went on. Sounds
were deadened by the fall, and so we were travelling in a silence to
which danger gave a touch of grandeur.
The morning of the morrow found us at Avila. We were eight hours late,
and had fasted for a day. We learnt at last that we should be “hung
up” at that place four days! Do you know Avila by any chance? It is
the place that they should send those people to who rave about Old
Spain being dead and done with. The inn I stopped at, Don Quixote could
easily have used also.
In resuming my journey I went third-class, for a change, in a
compartment nearly full of Spanish women. There were really four
compartments with partitions about shoulder high.
Well, we were passing the Sierra of Guadarrama, and suddenly the train
stopped again. We were blocked by another avalanche. When we realized
this there was a general request made to a gitana present to dance.
She did dance: a woman about thirty, of the ugly gipsy type, but she
seemed to have fire in the fingers that flashed the castanets and fire
in her limbs. Everyone knelt and listened, or beat time with their
hands. I now noticed in the corner facing me a young girl, who was
singing.
She wore a rose-coloured skirt, that made me guess she was from
Andalucia--that colour-loving province.
Her shoulders and bosom were swathed in a creamy shawl, and she had a
throat scarf of white foulard to protect her from the cold. The whole
carriage already knew that she was trained at the Convent of San José
d’Avila, was going to Madrid to find her mother, and bore the name of
Concha Perez.
Her voice was singularly penetrating. She sang without moving her body
about, hands in shawl, eyes closed.
The songs she was singing were not taught her by the Sisters, I can be
quite sure. They were the little songs of four lines, only loved by the
people. Into these quatrains they put much passion. I can hear again
in memory the caress in her voice as she sang--
“Thy bed is of jasmins,
Thy sheets of white roses;
Of lilies thy pillows,
And a dark rose there poses.”
There followed an angry scene between her and the gipsy. They fought,
but I stepped between, for I loathe to see women fighting. They do
it badly and dangerously. When it was all over, a gendarme came, and
after slapping Concha upon the cheeks put her in another compartment.
The train now went forward again, and my companions began to sleep.
The image of the little singer tormented me. Where had he put her? I
leant over the barrier of my carriage, and saw that she was there,
close enough to touch. She was sleeping like a tired child. I saw the
closed lids, the long lashes, the little nose and two small lips, that
seemed to be at one and the same time infantile and sensual. Gazing
for a long time at those amazing lips, I wondered whether their dream
movements were recalling the breast that nursed her or the lips of a
lover.
Daylight came, and with it the end of the journey. I aided the little
Concha to get together six parcels, and offered to carry them but was
refused. She managed with them somehow, and ran off. I soon lost sight
of her.
You see, do you not, this first meeting was insignificant, almost
vague. She had interested and amused me for a little while. That was
really all. Soon I ceased to think of her at all.