Farewell to the melancholy mood in which she had listened to the
youth!... Her eyes shone with a steely glance; her voice was cruel and
concise.
"Goodnight!"
And she turned her back upon him, beginning to walk as if taking flight.
Aguirre hastened after her, soon reaching her side.
"And that's how you leave me!" he exclaimed. "Like this, never to meet
again... Can a love that was our very life end in such a manner?..."
The hymn had ceased in the evangelical temple; the Catholic bell was
silent; the military music had died out at the other end of the town. A
painful silence enveloped the two lovers. To Aguirre it seemed as if the
world were deserted, as if the light had died forever, and that in the
midst of the chaos and the eternal darkness he and she were the only
living creatures.
"At least give me your hand; let me feel it in mine for the last
time.... Don't you care to?"
She seemed to hesitate, but finally extended her right hand. How
lifeless it was! How icy!
"Good-bye, Luis," she said curtly, turning her eyes away so as not to
see him.
She spoke more, however. She felt that impulse of giving consolation
which animates all women at times of great grief. He must not despair.
Life held sweet hopes in store for him. He was going to see the world;
he was still young....
Aguirre spoke from between clenched teeth, to himself, as if he had gone
mad. Young! As if grief paid attention to ages! A week before he had
been thirty years old; now he felt as old as the world.
Luna made an effort to release herself, trembling for herself, uncertain
of her will power.
"Good-bye! Good-bye!"
This time she really departed, and he allowed her to leave, lacking the
strength with which to follow her.
Aguirre passed a sleepless night, seated at the edge of his bed, gazing
with stupid fixity at the designs upon the wall-paper. To think that
this could have happened! And he, no stronger than a mere child, had
permitted her to leave him forever!... Several times he was surprised to
catch himself speaking aloud.
"No. No. It cannot be.... It _shall_ not be!"
The light went out, of its own accord, and Aguirre continued to
soliloquize, without knowing what he was saying. "It shall not be! It
shall not be!" he murmured emphatically. But passing from rage to
despair he asked himself what he could do to retain her, to end his
torture.
Nothing! His misfortune was irreparable. They were going to resume the
course of their lives, each on a different road; they were going to
embark on the following day, each to an opposite pole of the earth, and
each would carry away nothing of the other, save a memory; and this
memory, under the tooth of time, would become ever smaller, more
fragile, more delicate. And this was the end of such a great love! This
was the finale of a passion that had been born to fill an entire
existence! And the earth did not tremble, and nobody was moved, and the
world ignored this great sorrow, even as it would ignore the misfortunes
of a pair of ants. Ah! Misery!...
He would roam about the world carrying his recollections with him, and
perhaps some day he would come to forget them, for one can live only by
forgetting; but when his grief should dissolve with the years he would
be left an empty man, like a smiling automaton, incapable of any
affections other than material ones. And thus he would go on living
until he should grow old and die. And she, the beautiful creature, who
seemed to scatter music and incense at every step,--the incomparable
one, the only one,--would likewise grow old, far from his side. She
would be one more Jewish wife, an excellent mother of a family, grown
stout from domestic life, flabby and shapeless from the productivity of
her race, with a brood of children about her, preoccupied at all hours
with the earnings of the family, a full moon, cumbrous, yellow, without
the slightest resemblance to the springtime star that had illuminated
the fleeting and best moments of his life. What a jest of fate!...
Farewell forever, Luna!... No, not Luna. Farewell, Horabuena!
On the next day he took passage on the ship that was leaving for Port
Said. What was there for him to do in Gibraltar?... It had been for
three months a paradise, at the side of the woman who beautified his
existence; now it was an intolerable city, cramped and monotonous; a
deserted castle; a damp, dark prison. He telegraphed to his uncle,
informing him of his departure. The vessel would weigh anchor at night,
after the sunset gun, when it had taken on its supply of coal.
The hotel people brought him news. Khiamull had died at the hospital, in
the full possession of his mental faculties as is characteristic of
consumptives, and had spoken of the distant land of the sun, of its
virgins, dark and slender as bronze statues, crowned with the lotus
flower. A hemorrhage had put an end to his hopes. All the town was
talking about his burial. His compatriots, the Hindu shopkeepers, had
sent a delegation to the governor and made arrangements for the funeral
rites. They were going to cremate the body on the outskirts of the town,
on the beach that faced the East. His remains must not rot in impure
soil. The English governor, deferent toward the creeds of his various
subjects, presented them with the necessary wood. At night-fall they
would dig a hollow on the beach, fill it with shavings and faggots; then
they would put in large logs, and the corpse; on top of this, more wood,
and after the pyre had ceased to burn for lack of fuel Khiamull's
religious brethren would gather the ashes and bear them off in a boat to
scatter them at sea.
Aguirre listened coldly to these details. Happy Khiamull, who was
departing thus! Fire, plenty of fire! Would that he could burn the town,
and the near-by lands, and finally the whole world!...
At ten o'clock the transatlantic liner raised anchor. The Spaniard,
leaning over the rail, saw the black mountain and the huge Rock, its
base speckled with rows of lights, grow small as if sinking into the
horizon. Its obscure ridge was silhouetted against the sky like a
crouching monster toying with a swarm of stars between its paws.
The vessel rounded Europa Point and the lights disappeared. Now the
cliff was visible from its Eastern face, black, imposing, bare, with no
other light than that of the lighthouse at its extreme end.
Suddenly a new light arose,--a red line, a perpendicular flame,--at the
foot of the mountain, as if it came out of the sea. Aguirre guessed what
it was. Poor Khiamull! The flames were beginning to consume his body
upon the beach. The bronze-faced men were at this moment gathered about
the pyre, like priests of a remote civilization, hastening the disposal
of their companion's remains.
Farewell, Khiamull! He had died with his hope placed in the Orient,--the
land of love and perfumes, the abode of delights,--without having been
able to realize his dreams. And here was Aguirre traveling thither with
an empty heart, a paralyzed soul, wearied and bereft of strength, as if
he had just emerged from the most terrible of ordeals.
"Farewell, melancholy and gentle Hindu, poor poet who dreamed of light
and love as you sold your trinkets in that damp hole!..." His remains,
purified by flame, were going to be lost in the bosom of the great
mother. Perhaps his delicate, bird-like soul would survive in the
sea-gulls that fluttered about the cliff; perhaps he would sing in the
roaring foam of the submarine caverns, as an accompaniment to the vows
of other lovers who would come there in their turn, on the impulse of
the deceptive illusion, the sweet lie of love that gives us new strength
to continue on our way.
END
THE TOAD
"I WAS spending the summer at Nazaret," said my friend Orduna, "a little
fishermen's town near Valencia. The women went to the city to sell the
fish, the men sailed about in their boats with triangular sails, or
tugged at their nets on the beach; we summer vacationists spent the day
sleeping and the night at the doors of our houses, contemplating the
phosphorescence of the waves or slapping ourselves here and there
whenever we heard the buzz of a mosquito,--that scourge of our resting
hours.
"The doctor, a hardy and genial old fellow, would come and sit down
under the bower before my door, and we'd spend the night together, with
a jar or a watermelon at our side, speaking of his patients, folks of
land or sea, credulous, rough and insolent in their manners, given over
to fishing or to the cultivation of their fields. At times we laughed as
he recalled the illness of Visanteta, the daughter of _la Soberana_, an
old fishmonger who justified her nickname of _the Queen_ by her bulk and
her stature, as well as by the arrogance with which she treated her
market companions, imposing her will upon them by right of might.... The
belle of the place was this Visanteta: tiny, malicious, with a clever
tongue, and no other good looks than that of youthful health; but she
had a pair of penetrating eyes and a trick of pretending timidity,
weakness and interest, which simply turned the heads of the village
youths. Her sweetheart was _Carafosca_, a brave fisherman who was
capable of sailing on a stick of wood. On the sea he was admired by all
for his audacity; on land he filled everybody with fear by his provoking
silence and the facility with which he whipped out his aggressive
sailor's knife. Ugly, burly and always ready for a fight, like the huge
creatures that from time to time showed up in the waters of Nazaret
devouring all the fish, he would walk to church on Sunday afternoons at
his sweetheart's side, and every time the maiden raised her head to
speak to him, amidst the simple talk and lisping of a delicate, pampered
child, _Carafosca_ would cast a challenging look about him with his
squinting eyes, as if defying all the folk of the fields, the beach and
the sea to take his Visanteta away from him.
"One day the most astounding news was bruited about Nazaret. The
daughter of _la Soberana_ had an animal inside of her. Her abdomen was
swelling; the slow deformation revealed itself through her underskirts
and her dress; her face lost color, and the fact that she had swooned
several times, vomiting painfully, upset the entire cabin and caused her
mother to burst into desperate lamentations and to run in terror for
help. Many of her neighbors smiled when they heard of this illness. Let
them tell it to _Carafosca_!... But the incredulous ones ceased their
malicious talk and their suspicions when they saw how sad and desperate
_Carafosca_ became at his sweetheart's illness, praying for her recovery
with all the fervor of a simple soul, even going so far as to enter the
little village church,--he, who had always been a pagan, a blasphemer of
God and the saints.
"Yes, it was a strange and horrible sickness. The people, in their
predisposition to believe in all sorts of extraordinary and rare
afflictions, were certain that they knew what this was. Visanteta had a
toad in her stomach. She had drunk from a certain spot of the near-by
river, and the wicked animal, small and almost unnoticeable, had gone
down into her stomach, growing fast. The good neighbors, trembling with
stupefaction, flocked to _la Soberana's_ cabin to examine the girl. All,
with a certain solemnity, felt the swelling abdomen, seeking in its
tightened surface the outlines of the hidden creature. Some of them,
older and more experienced than the rest, laughed with a triumphant
expression. There it was, right under their hand. They could feel it
stirring, moving about.... Yes, it was moving! And after grave
deliberation, they agreed upon remedies to expel the unwelcome guest.
They gave the girl spoonfuls of rosemary honey, so that the wicked
creature inside should start to eat it gluttonously, and when he was
most preoccupied in his joyous meal, whiz!--an inundation of onion juice
and vinegar that would bring him out at full gallop. At the same time
they applied to her stomach miraculous plasters, so that the toad, left
without a moment's rest, should escape in terror; there were rags soaked
in brandy and saturated with incense; tangles of hemp dipped in the
calking of the ships; mountain herbs; simple bits of paper with numbers,
crosses and Solomon's seal upon them, sold by the miracle-worker of the
city. Visanteta thought that all these remedies that were being thrust
down her throat would be the death of her. She shuddered with the chills
of nausea, she writhed in horrible contortions as if she were about to
expel her very entrails, but the odious toad did not deign to show even
one of his legs, and _la Soberana_ cried to heaven. Ah, her daughter!...
Those remedies would never succeed in casting out the wretched animal;
it was better to let it alone, and not torture the poor girl; rather
give it a great deal to eat, so that it wouldn't feed upon the strength
of Visanteta who was glowing paler and weaker every day.
"And as _la Soberana_ was poor, all her friends, moved by the
compassionate solidarity of the common people, devoted themselves to the
feeding of Visanteta so that the toad should do her no harm. The
fisherwomen, upon returning from the square brought her cakes that were
purchased in city establishments, that only the upper class patronized;
on the beach, when the catch was sorted, they laid aside for her a
dainty morsel that would serve for a succulent soup; the neighbors, who
happened to be cooking in their pots over the fire would take out a
cupful of the best of the broth, carrying it slowly so that it shouldn't
spill, and bring it to _la Soberana's_ cabin; cups of chocolate arrived
one after the other every afternoon.
"Visanteta rebelled against this excessive kindness. She couldn't
swallow another drop! She was full! But her mother stuck out her hairy
nose with an imperious expression. 'I tell you to eat!' She must
remember what she had inside of her.... And she began to feel a faint,
indefinable affection for that mysterious creature, lodged in the
entrails of her daughter. She pictured it to herself; she could see it;
it was her pride. Thanks to it, the whole town had its eyes upon the
cabin and the trail of visitors was unending, and _la Soberana_ never
passed a woman on her way without being stopped and asked for news.
"Only once had they summoned the doctor, seeing him pass by the door;
but not that they really wished him, or had any faith in him. What could
that helpless man do against such a tenacious animal!... And upon
hearing that, not content with the explanations of the mother and the
daughter and his own audacious tapping around her clothes, he
recommended an internal examination, the proud mother almost showed him
the door. The impudent wretch! Not in a hurry was he going to have the
pleasure of seeing her daughter so intimately! The poor thing, so good
and so modest, who blushed merely at the thought of such proposals!...
"On Sunday afternoons Visanteta went to church, figuring at the head of
the daughters of Mary. Her voluminous abdomen was eyed with admiration
by the girls. They all asked breathlessly after the toad, and Visanteta
replied wearily. It didn't bother her so much now. It had grown very
much because she ate so well; sometimes it moved about, but it didn't
hurt as it used to. One after the other the maidens would place their
hands upon the afflicted one and feel the movements of the invisible
creature, admiring as they did so the superiority of their friend. The
curate, a blessed chap of pious simplicity, pretended not to notice the
feminine curiosity, and thought with awe of the things done by God to
put His creatures to the test. Afterwards, when the afternoon drew to a
close, and the choir sang in gentle voice the praises of Our Lady of the
Sea, each of the virgins would fall to thinking of that mysterious
beast, praying fervently that poor Visanteta be delivered of it as soon
as possible.
"_Carafosca_, too, enjoyed a certain notoriety because of his
sweetheart's affliction. The women accosted him, the old fishermen
stopped him to inquire about the animal that was torturing his girl.
'The poor thing! The poor thing!' he would groan, in accents of amorous
commiseration. He said no more; but his eyes revealed a vehement desire
to take over as soon as possible Visanteta and her toad, since the
latter inspired a certain affection in him because of its connection
with her.
"One night, when the doctor was at my door, a woman came in search of
him, panting with dramatic horror. _La Soberana's_ daughter was very
sick; he must run to her rescue. The doctor shrugged his shoulders 'Ah,
yes! The toad!' And he didn't seem at all anxious to stir. Then came
another woman, more agitated than the first. Poor Visanteta! She was
dying! Her shrieks could be heard all over the street. The wicked beast
was devouring her entrails....
"I followed the doctor, attracted by the curiosity that had the whole
town in a commotion. When we came to _la Soberana's_ cabin we had to
force our way through a compact group of women who obstructed the
doorway, crowding into the house. A rending shriek, a rasping wail came
from the innermost part of the dwelling, rising above the heads of the
curious or terrified women. The hoarse voice of _la Soberana_ answered
with entreating accents. Her daughter! Ah, Lord, her poor daughter!...
"The arrival of the physician was received by a chorus of demands on the
part of the old women. Poor Visanteta was writhing furiously, unable to
bear such pain; her eyes bulged from their sockets and her features were
distorted. She must be operated upon; her entrails must be opened and
the green, slippery demon that was eating her alive must be expelled.
"The doctor proceeded upon his task, without paying any attention to the
advice showered upon him, and before I could reach his side his voice
resounded through the sudden silence, with ill-humored brusqueness:
"'But good Lord, the only trouble with this girl is that she's going
to...!'
"Before he could finish, all could guess from the harshness of his voice
what he was about to say. The group of women yielded before _la
Soberana's_ thrusts even as the waves of the sea under the belly of a
whale. She stuck out her big hands and her threatening nails, mumbling
insults and looking at the doctor with murder in her eyes. Bandit!
Drunkard! Out of her house!...It was the people's fault, for supporting
such an infidel. She'd eat him up! Let them make way for her!... And she
struggled violently with her friends, fighting to free herself and
scratch out the doctor's eyes. To her vindictive cries were joined the
weak bleating of Visanteta, protesting with the breath that was left her
between her groans of pain. It was a lie! Let that wicked man be gone!
What a nasty mouth he had! It was all a lie!...
"But the doctor went hither and thither, asking for water, for bandages,
snappy and imperious in his commands, paying no attention whatsoever to
the threats of the mother or the cries of the daughter, which were
becoming louder and more heart-rending than ever. Suddenly she roared as
if she were being slaughtered, and there was a bustle of curiosity
around the physician, whom I couldn't see. 'It's a lie! A lie!
Evil-tongued wretch! Slanderer!'... But the protestations of Visanteta
were no longer unaccompanied. To her voice of an innocent victim begging
justice from heaven was added the cry of a pair of lungs that were
breathing the air for the first time.
"And now the friends of _la Soberana_ had to restrain her from falling
upon her daughter. She would kill her! The bitch! Whose child was
that?... And terrified by the threats of her mother, the sick woman, who
was still sobbing 'It's a lie! A lie!' at last spoke. It was a young
fellow of the _huerta_ whom she had never seen again... an indiscretion
committed one evening... she no longer remembered. No, she could not
remember!... And she insisted upon this forgetfulness as if it were an
incontrovertible excuse.
"The people now saw through it all. The women were impatient to spread
the news. As we left, _la Soberana_, humiliated and in tears, tried to
kneel before the doctor and kiss his hand. 'Ay, Don Antoni!... Don
Antoni!' She asked pardon for her insults; she despaired when she
thought of the village comments. What they would have to suffer now!...
On the following day the youths that sang as they arranged their nets
would invent new verses. The song of the toad! Her life would become
impossible!... But even more than this, the thought of _Carafosca_
terrified her. She knew very well what sort of brute that was. He would
kill poor Visanteta the first time she appeared on the street; and she
herself would meet the same fate for being her mother and not having
guarded her well. 'Ay, Don Antoni!' She begged him, upon her knees, to
see _Carafosca_. He, who was so good and who knew so much, could
convince the fellow with his reasoning, and make him swear that he would
not do the women any harm,--that he would forget them.
"The doctor received these entreaties with the same indifference as he
had received the threats, and he answered sharply. He would see about
it; it was a delicate affair. But once in the street, he shrugged his
shoulders with resignation. 'Let's go and see that animal.'
"We pulled him out of the tavern and the three of us began to walk along
the beach through the darkness. The fisherman seemed to be awed at
finding himself between two persons of such importance. Don Antonio
spoke to him of the indisputable superiority of men ever since the
earliest days of creation; of the scorn with which women should be
regarded because of their lack of seriousness; of their immense number
and the ease with which we could pick another if the one we had happened
to displease us... and at last, with brutal directness, told what had
happened.
"_Carafosca_ hesitated, as if he had not understood the doctor's words
very well. Little by little the certainty dawned upon his dense
comprehension. 'By God! By God!' And he scratched himself fearfully
under his cap, and brought his hands to his sash as if he were seeking
his redoubtable knife.
"The physician tried to console him. He must forget Visanteta; there
would be no sense or advantage in killing her. It wasn't worth while for
a splendid chap like him to go to prison for slaying a worthless
creature like her. The real culprit was that unknown laborer; but... and
she! And how easily she... committed the indiscretion, not being able to
recall anything afterwards!...
"For a long time we walked along in painful silence, with no other
novelty than _Carafosca's_ scratching of his head and his sash. Suddenly
he surprised us with the roar of his voice, speaking to us in Castilian,
thus adding solemnity to what he said:
"'Do you want me to tell you something?... Do you want me to tell you
something?'
"He looked at us with hostile eyes, as if he saw before him the unknown
culprit of the _huerta_, ready to pounce upon him. It could be seen that
his sluggish brain had just adopted a very firm resolution.... What was
it? Let him speak.
"'Well, then,' he articulated slowly, as if we were enemies whom he
desired to confound, 'I tell you... that now I love the girl more than
ever.'
"In our stupefaction, at a loss for reply, we shook hands with him."
END
COMPASSION
AT TEN o'clock in the evening Count de Sagreda walked into his club on
the Boulevard des Capucins. There was a bustle among the servants to
relieve him of his cane, his highly polished hat and his costly fur
coat, which, as it left his shoulders revealed a shirt-bosom of
immaculate neatness, a gardenia in his lapel, and all the attire of
black and white, dignified yet brilliant, that belongs to a gentleman
who has just dined.