their feet the blue immensity and before their eyes the seemingly
interminable wall that barred from sight a great part of the horizon.
Perhaps on the other side of the cliff the gold of the sunset was still
shining. On this side already the shades of night were gently falling.
The sweethearts were silent, overwhelmed by the silence of the spot,
united to each other by an impulse of fear, crushed by their
insignificance in the midst of this annihilating vastness, even as two
Egyptian ants in the shadow of the Great Pyramid.
Aguirre felt the necessity of saying something, and his voice took on a
grave character, as if in those surroundings, impregnated with the
majesty of Nature, it was impossible to speak otherwise.
"I love you," he began, with the incongruity of one who passes without
transition from long meditation to the spoken word. "I love you, for you
are of my race and yet you are not; because you speak my language and
yet your blood is not my blood. You possess the grace and beauty of the
Spanish woman, yet there is something more in you,--something exotic,
that speaks to me of distant lands, of poetic things, of unknown
perfumes that I seem to smell whenever I am near you.... And you, Luna.
Why do you love me?"
"I love you," she replied, after a long silence, her voice solemn and
veiled like that of an emotional soprano, "I love you because you, too,
have something in your face that resembles those of my race, and yet you
are as distinct from them as is the servant from the master. I love
you... I don't know why. In me there dwells the soul of the ancient
Jewesses of the desert, who went to the well in the oasis with their
hair let down and their pitchers on their heads. Then came the Gentile
stranger, with his camels, begging water; she looked at him with her
solemn, deep eyes, and as she poured the water in between her white
hands she gave him her heart, her whole soul, and followed him like a
slave.... Your people killed and robbed mine; for centuries my
forefathers wept in strange lands the loss of their new Zion, their
beautiful land, their nest of consolation. I ought to hate you, but I
love you; I am yours and will follow you wherever you go." The blue
shadows of the promontory became deeper. It was almost night. The
sea-gulls, shrieking, retired to their hiding-places in the rocks. The
sea commenced to disappear beneath a thin mist. The lighthouse of Europe
shone like a diamond from afar in the heavens above the Strait, which
were still clear. A sweet somnolence seemed to arise from the dying day,
enveloping all Nature. The two human atoms, lost in this immensity, felt
themselves invaded by the universal tremor, oblivious to all that but a
short time before had constituted their lives. They forgot the presence
of the city on the other side of the mountain; the existence of
humanity, of which they were infinitesimal parts.... Completely alone,
penetrating each other through their pupils! Thus, thus forever! There
was a crackling sound in the dark, like dry branches creaking before
they break.
All at once a red flash sped through the air,--something straight and
rapid as the flight of a fiery bird. Then the mountain trembled and the
sea echoed under a dry thunder. The sunset gun!... A timely boom.
The two shuddered as though just awakening from a dream. Luna, as if in
flight, ran down the path in search of the main road, without listening
to Aguirre.... She was going to get home late; she would never visit
that spot again. It was dangerous.
IV
THE consul wandered through Royal Street, his pipe out, his glance sad
and his cane hanging from his arm. He was depressed. When, during his
walking back and forth he stopped instinctively before Khiamull's shop,
he had to pass on. Khiamull was not there. Behind the counter were only
two clerks, as greenish in complexion as their employer. His poor friend
was in the hospital, in the hope that a few days of rest away from the
damp gloom of the shop would be sufficient to relieve him of the cough
that seemed to unhinge his body and make him throw up blood. He came
from the land of the sun and needed its divine caress.
Aguirre might have stopped at the Aboabs' establishment, but he was
somewhat afraid. The old man whimpered with emotion, as usual, when he
spoke to the consul, but in his kindly, patriarchal gestures there was
something new that seemed to repel the Spaniard. Zabulon received him
with a grunt and would continue counting money.
For four days Aguirre had not seen Luna. The hours that he spent at his
window, vainly watching the house of the Aboabs! Nobody on the roof;
nobody behind the blinds, as if the house were unoccupied. Several times
he encountered on the street the wife and daughters of Zabulon, but they
passed him by pretending not to see him, solemn and haughty in their
imposing obesity.
Luna was no more to be seen than as if she had left Gibraltar. One
morning he thought he recognized her delicate hand opening the blinds;
he imagined that he could distinguish, through the green strips of
wood, the ebony crown of her hair, and her luminous eyes raised toward
him. But it was a fleeting apparition that lasted only a second. When he
tried to make a gesture of entreaty, when he moved his arms imploring
her to wait, Luna had already disappeared.
How was he to approach her, breaking through the guarded aloofness in
which Jewish families dwell? To whom was he to go for an explanation of
this unexpected change?... Braving the icy reception with which the
Aboabs greeted him, he entered their place under various pretexts. The
proprietors received him with frigid politeness, as if he were an
unwelcome customer. The Jews who came in on business eyed him with
insolent curiosity, as if but a short time before they had been
discussing him.
One morning he saw, engaged in conversation with Zabulon, a man of about
forty, of short stature, somewhat round shouldered with spectacles. He
wore a high silk hat, a loose coat and a large golden chain across his
waistcoat. In a somewhat sing-song voice he was speaking of the
greatness of Buenos Aires, of the future that awaited those of his race
in that city, of the good business he had done. The affectionate
attention with which the old man and his son listened to the man
suggested a thought to Aguirre that sent all the blood to his heart, at
the same time producing a chill in the rest of his body. He shuddered
with surprise. Could it be _he_?... And after a few seconds,
instinctively, without any solid grounds, he himself gave the answer.
Yes; it was he; there had been no mistake. Without a doubt he beheld
before him Luna's promised husband, who had just returned from South
America. And if he still had any doubts as to the correctness of his
conjecture, he was strengthened in his belief by a rapid glance from the
man,--a cold, scornful look that was cast upon him furtively, while the
looker continued to speak with his relatives.
That night he saw him again on Royal Street. He saw him, but not alone.
He was arm in arm with Luna, who was dressed in black; Luna, who leaned
upon him as if he were already her husband; the two walked along with
all the freedom of Jewish engaged couples. She did not see Aguirre or
did not wish to see him. As she passed him by she turned her head,
pretending to be engrossed in conversation with her companion.
Aguirre's friends, who were gathered in a group on the sidewalk before
the Exchange, laughed at the meeting, with the light-heartedness of
persons who look upon love only as a pastime.
"Friend," said one of them to the Spaniard, "they've stolen her away
from you. The Jew's carrying her off.... It couldn't have been
otherwise. They marry only among themselves... and that girl has lots of
money."
Aguirre did not sleep a wink that night; he lay awake planning the most
horrible deeds of vengeance. In any other country he knew what he would
do; he would insult the Jew, slap him, fight a duel, kill him; and if
the man did not respond to such provocation, he would pursue him until
he left the field free.... But he lived here in another world; a country
that was ignorant of the knightly procedure of ancient peoples. A
challenge to a duel would cause laughter, like something silly and
extravagant. He could, of course, attack his enemy right in the street,
bring him to his knees and kill him if he tried to defend himself. But
ah! English justice did not recognize love nor did it accept the
existence of crimes of passion. Yonder, half way up the slope of the
mountain, in the ruins of the castle that had been occupied by the
Moorish kings of Gibraltar, he had seen the prison, filled with men from
all lands, especially Spaniards, incarcerated for life because they had
drawn the poniard under the impulse of love or jealousy, just as they
were accustomed to doing a few metres further on, at the other side of
the boundary. The whip worked with the authorization of the law; men
languished and died turning the wheel of the pump. A cold, methodical
cruelty, a thousand times worse than the fanatic savagery of the
Inquisition, devoured human creatures, giving them nothing more than the
exact amount of sustenance necessary to prolong their torture.... No.
This was another world, where his jealousy and his fury could find no
vent. And he would have to lose Luna without a cry of protest, without a
gesture of manly rebellion!...Now, upon beholding himself parted from
her, he felt for the first time the genuine importance of his love; a
love that had been begun as a pastime, through an exotic curiosity, and
which was surely going to upset his entire existence... What was he to
do?
He recalled the words of one of those inhabitants of Gibraltar who had
accompanied him on Royal Street,--a strange mixture of Andalusian
sluggishness and British apathy.
"Take my word for it, friend, the chief Rabbi and those of the synagogue
have a hand in this. You were scandalizing them; everybody saw you
making love in public. You don't realize how important one of these
fellows is. They enter the homes of the faithful and run everything,
giving out orders that nobody dares to disobey."
The following day Aguirre did not leave his street, and either walked up
and down in front of the Aboabs' house or stood motionless at the
entrance to his hotel, without losing sight for a moment of Luna's
dwelling. Perhaps she would come out! After the meeting of the previous
day she must have lost her fear. They must have a talk. Here it was
three months since he had come to Gibraltar, forgetting his career, in
danger of ruining it, abusing the influence of his relatives. And was he
going to leave that woman without exchanging a final word, without
knowing the cause for the sudden overturn?...
Toward night-fall Aguirre experienced a strange shudder of emotion,
similar to that which he had felt in the brokers' shop upon beholding
the Jew that had just returned from South America. A woman came out of
the Aboabs' house; she was dressed in black. It was Luna, just as he had
seen her the day before.
She turned her head slowly and Aguirre understood that she had seen
him,--that perhaps she had been watching him for a long time hidden
behind the blinds. She began to walk hastily, without turning her head,
and Aguirre followed her at a certain distance, on the opposite
sidewalk, jostling through the groups of Spanish workmen who, with their
bundles in their hands, were returning from the Arsenal to the town of
La Línea, before the sunset gun should sound and the place be closed.
Thus he shadowed her along Royal Street, and as she arrived at the
Exchange, Luna continued by way of Church Street, passing by the
Catholic Cathedral. Here there were less people about and the shops were
fewer; except at the corners of the lanes where there were small groups
of men that had formed on coming from work. Aguirre quickened his gait
so as to catch up with Luna, while she, as if she had guessed his
intention, slackened her step. As they reached the rear of the
Protestant church, near the opening called Cathedral Square, the two
met.
"Luna! Luna!..."
She turned her glance upon Aguirre, and then instinctively they made for
the end of the square, fleeing from the publicity of the street. They
came to the Moorish arcades of the evangelist temple, whose colors were
beginning to grow pale, vanishing into the shade of dusk. Before either
of them could utter a word they were enveloped in a wave of soft
melody,--music that seemed to come from afar, stray chords from the
organ, the voices of virgins and children who were chanting in English
with bird-like notes the glory of the Lord.
Aguirre was at a loss for words. All his angry thoughts were forgotten.
He felt like crying, like kneeling and begging something of that God,
whoever He might be, who was at the other side of the walls, lulled by
the hymn from the throat of the mystic birds with firm and virginal
voices:
"Luna!... Luna!"
He could say nothing else, but the Jewess, stronger than he and less
sensitive to that music which was not hers, spoke to him in a low and
hurried voice. She had stolen out just to see him; she must talk with
him, say good-bye. It was the last time they would meet.
Aguirre heard her without fully understanding her words. All his
attention was concentrated upon her eyes, as if the five days in which
they had not met were the same as a long voyage, and as if he were
seeking in Luna's countenance some effect of the extended lapse of time
that had intervened. Was she the same?... Yes it was she. But her lips
were somewhat pale with emotion; she pressed her lids tightly together
as if every word cost her a prodigious effort, as if every one of them
tore out part of her soul. Her lashes, as they met, revealed in the
corner of her eyes lines that seemed to indicate fatigue, recent tears,
sudden age.
The Spaniard was at last able to understand what she was saying. But was
it all true?... To part! Why? Why?... And as he stretched his arms out
to her in the vehemence of his entreaty Luna became paler still,
huddling together timidly, her eyes dilated with fear.
It was impossible for their love to continue. She must look upon all the
past as a beautiful dream; perhaps the best of her life... but the
moment of waking had come. She was marrying, thus fulfilling her duty
toward her family and her race. The past had been a wild escapade, a
childish flight of her exalted and romantic nature. The wise men of her
people had clearly pointed out to her the dangerous consequences of such
frivolity. She must follow her destiny and be as her mother had
been,--like all the women of her blood. Upon the following day she was
going to Tangier with her promised husband, Isaac Nuñez. He himself and
her relatives had counselled her to have one last interview with the
Spaniard, so as to put an end to an equivocal situation that might
compromise the honor of a good merchant and destroy the tranquility of a
peaceful man. They would marry at Tangier, where her fiancé's family
lived; perhaps they would remain there; perhaps they would journey to
South America and resume business there. At any rate, their love, their
sweet adventure, their divine dream, was ended forever.
"Forever!" murmured Luis in a muffled voice. "Say it again. I hear it
from your lips, yet I can't believe my ears. Say it once more. I wish to
make sure."
His voice was filled with supplication but at the same time his clenched
hand and his threatening glance terrified Luna, who opened her eyes wide
and pressed her lips tightly together, as if restraining a sob. The
Jewess seemed to grow old in the shadows.
The fiery bird of twilight flashed through the air with its fluttering
of red wings. Closely following came a thunderclap that made the houses
and ground tremble.... The sunset gun! Aguirre, in his agony, could see
in his mind's eye a high wall of crags, flying gulls, the foamy, roaring
sea, a misty evening light, the same as that which now enveloped them.
"Do you remember, Luna? Do you remember?"...
The roll of drums sounded from a near-by street, accompanied by the
shrill notes of the fife and the deep boom of the bass drum, drowning
with its belligerent sound the mystic, ethereal chants that seemed to
filter through the walls of the temple. It was the evening patrol on its
way to close the gates of the town. The soldiers, clad in uniforms of
greyish yellow, marched by, in time with the tune from their
instruments, while above their cloth helmets waved the arms of the
gymnast who was deafening the street with his blows upon the drum head.
The two waited for the noisy patrol to pass. As the soldiers disappeared
in the distance the melodies from the celestial choir inside the church
returned slowly to the ears of the listeners.
The Spaniard was abject, imploring, passing from his threatening
attitude to one of humble supplication.
"Luna... Lunita! What you say is not true. It cannot be. To separate
like this? Don't listen to any of them. Follow the dictates of your
heart. There is still a chance for us to be happy. Instead of going off
with that man whom you do not love, whom you surely cannot love, flee
with me."
"No," she replied firmly, closing her eyes as though she feared to
weaken if she looked at him. "No. That is impossible. Your God is not my
God. Your people, not my people."
In the Catholic Cathedral, near by, but out of sight, the bell rang with
a slow, infinitely melancholy reverberation. Within the Protestant
Church the choir of virgins was beginning a new hymn, like a flock of
joyous birds winging about the organ. Afar, gradually becoming fainter
and fainter and losing itself in the streets that were covered by the
shadows of night, sounded the thunder of the patrol and the playful
lisping of the fifes, hymning the universal power of England to the tune
of circus music.
"Your God! Your people!" exclaimed the Spaniard sadly. "Here, where
there are so many Gods! Here, where everybody is of your people!...
Forget all that. We are all equals in life. There is only one truth:
Love."
"Ding, dong!" groaned the bell aloft in the Catholic Cathedral, weeping
the death of day. "Lead Kindly Light!" sang the voices of the virgins
and the children in the Protestant temple, resounding through the
twilight silence of the square.
"No," answered Luna harshly, with an expression that Aguirre had never
seen in her before; she seemed to be another woman. "No. You have a
land, you have a nation, and you may well laugh at races and religions,
placing love above them. We, on the other hand, wherever we may be born,
and however much the laws may proclaim us the equals of others, are
always called Jews, and Jews we must remain, whether we will or no. Our
land, our nation, our only banner, is the religion of our ancestors. And
you ask me to desert it,--to abandon my people?... Sheer madness!"
Aguirre listened to her in amazement.
"Luna, I don't recognize you.... Luna, Lunita, you are another woman
altogether.... Do you know what I'm thinking of at this moment? I'm
thinking of your mother, whom I did not know."
He recalled those nights of cruel uncertainty, when Luna's mother tore
her jet-black hair before the bed in which her child lay gasping; how
she tried to deceive the demon, the hated _Huerco_, who came to rob her
of her beloved daughter.
"Ah! I, too, Luna, feel the simple faith of your mother,--her innocent
credulity. Love and despair simplify our souls and remove from them the
proud tinsel with which we clothe them in moments of happiness and
pride; love and despair render us by their mystery, timid and
respectful, like the simplest of creatures. I feel what your poor mother
felt during those nights. I shudder at the presence of the _Huerco_ in
our midst. Perhaps it's that old fellow with the goat's whiskers who is
at the head of your people here; all of you are a materialistic sort,
without imagination, incapable of knowing true love; it seems impossible
that you can be one of them.... You, Luna! You! Don't laugh at what I
say. But I feel a strong desire to kneel down here before you, to
stretch out upon the ground and cry: '_Huerco_, what do you wish? Have
you come to carry off my Luna?... Luna is not here. She has gone
forever. This woman here is my beloved, my wife. She has no name yet,
but I'll give her one.' And to seize you in my arms, as your mother did,
to defend you against the black demon, and then to see you saved, and
mine forever; to confirm your new name with my caresses, and to call
you... my Only One, yes, my Only One. Do you like the name?... Let our
lives be lived together, with the whole world as our home."
She shook her head sadly. Very beautiful. One dream more. A few days
earlier these words would have moved her and would have made her weep.
But now!... And with cruel insistence she repeated "No, no. My God is
not your God. My race is not your race. Why should we persist in
attempting the impossible?..."
When her people had spoken indignantly about the love affair that was
being bruited all about town; when the spiritual head of her community
came to her with the ire of an ancient prophet; when accident, or
perhaps the warning of a fellow Jew, had brought about the return of her
betrothed, Isaac Nuñez, Luna felt awaking within her something that had
up to that time lain dormant. The dregs of old beliefs, hatreds and
hopes were stirred in the very depths of her thought, changing her
affections and imposing new duties. She was a Jewess and would remain
faithful to her race. She would not go to lose herself in barren
isolation among strange persons who hated the Jew through inherited
instinct. Among her own kind she would enjoy the influence of the wife
that is listened to in all family councils, and when she would become
old, her children would surround her with a religious veneration. She
did not feel strong enough to suffer the hatred and suspicion of that
hostile world into which love was trying to drag her,--a world that had
presented her people only with tortures and indignities. She wished to
be loyal to her race, to continue the defensive march that her nation
was realizing across centuries of persecution.
Soon she was inspired with compassion at the dejection of her former
sweetheart, and she spoke to him more gently. She could no longer feign
calmness or indifference. Did he think that she could ever forget him?
Ah! Those days had been the sweetest in all her existence; the romance
of her life, the blue flower that all women, even the most ordinary,
carry within their memories like a breath of poesy.
"Do you imagine that I don't know what my lot is going to be like?...
You were the unexpected, the sweet disturbance that beautifies life, the
happiness of love which finds joy in all that surrounds it and never
gives thought to the morrow. You are a man that stands out from all the
rest; I know that. I'll many, I'll have many children,--many!--for our
race is inexhaustible, and at night my husband will talk to me for hour
after hour about what we earned during the day. You... you are
different. Perhaps I would have had to suffer, to be on my guard lest
I'd lose you, but with all that you are happiness, you are illusion."
"Yes, I am all that," said Aguirre "I am all that because I love you....
Do you realize what you are doing, Luna? It is as if they laid thousands
and thousands of silver pounds upon the counter before Zabulon, and he
turned his back upon them, scorning them and preferring the synagogue.
Do you believe such a thing possible?... Very well, then. Love is a
fortune. It is like beauty, riches, power; all who are born have a
chance of acquiring one of these boons, but very few actually attain to
them. All live and die believing that they have known love, thinking it
a common thing, because they confuse it with animal satisfaction; but
love is a privilege, love is a lottery of fate, like wealth, like
beauty, which only a small minority enjoy.... And when love comes more
than half way to meet you, Luna, Lunita,--when fate places happiness
right in your hands, you turn your back upon it and walk off!...
Consider it well! There is yet time! Today, as I walked along Royal
Street I saw the ship notices. Tomorrow there's a boat sailing for Port
Said. Courage! Let us flee!... We'll wait there for a boat to take us to
Australia."