"Who are you?... What do you want?..." asked Nacha after the first
moment of astonishment.
"Who am I? Nobody in particular! Just someone who has guessed that you
are unhappy, and is anxious to help you."
"But ... you must have understood that I didn't want to see you again!
I can't receive you here. You shouldn't have come to this house. It's
hard on me! Think of the consequences! Perhaps I may lose my place
here!"
"Your place here is what you hate more than anything else in the world!"
"How do you know? I'm not so sure.... I have a quiet home--and I'm
free!"
The way the man looked at her made her break off. They were both silent
for a time, the stranger, however, not taking his eyes from Nacha for
a moment. She could see that he wanted to speak, but evidently did not
dare. At last, in a low voice and with visible emotion, he began:
"Nacha--you see I know your name--you are not telling me the truth! You
are not free!... You are suffering; and last night I saw how much! From
the moment I first saw you I have felt a tremendous pity for you."
"Oh, really?" Nacha exclaimed, with a laugh of affected irony,
calculated to put an end to the conversation with this man who had
forced his way into her house, whose presence there was compromising
to her, and who now, into the bargain, was allowing himself to express
pity for her.
"Yes, real pity!" he repeated, evidently not understanding that her
laugh was aimed at him.
"How kind of you! You must be an unusual sort of person!" Nacha said
again, laughing scornfully.
"Your life is nothing but suffering," he continued, rather as though
he were talking to himself and had not heard what Nacha said. "Here
you live in humiliation, worry, perpetual terror of what is about to
happen. That is not _living_, Nacha!"
"Call it dying if you like then. You are very amusing. I am sorry you
must go at once! But if Pampa should find you here.... I wish he would
come!"
They stood facing each other there in the middle of the room, the
stranger listening quietly while Nacha poured out her nervousness in
words, and yet more words, hurriedly, interrupting herself with her own
forced laughter, and distractedly moving her hands and arms.
"Did you think you had made a hit with me? How funny! But don't fool
yourself! I can't help laughing though, at the very idea! You're crazy.
Only crazy people act the way you do. Anyway, I love Pampa. So there!
You see what women are. He treats me badly, he despises me, he beats
me--but I wouldn't leave him for the first booby who comes along!"
By way of reply he took her hand and led her to the sofa, where
obediently she sat down. In a low voice that had in it the same ring of
sincerity and feeling as before, he went on:
"Nacha, you accept this man's ill treatment because you are afraid of
something worse. You cannot bear to think that tomorrow, or whenever he
leaves you, you will have to go from one man to another--"
"This is too much! Who gave you the right to insult me? I am a decent
woman!"
And then, finding her own words ridiculous perhaps, she began to laugh;
and the laugh, this time, seemed to reveal her scorn for herself and
her pride withal in living as she was living. The man's compassion grew.
"Why do you do it Nacha?"
"What?" she exclaimed, without checking her laughter.
"You are trying to bring together things that don't belong together.
You are trying to make yourself out a bad woman, while really you are
good."
Nacha, abruptly, became serious. She lowered her eyes and for several
seconds sat motionless, looking at the floor, seemingly preoccupied.
Finally she raised her head, and slowly turned her gaze upon this
unknown friend. The peace she found in his eyes astonished her. After a
long silence she asked him gently:
"Who are you? What is your name?"
He told her.
"Fernando Monsalvat...." she repeated, as though trying to inscribe the
syllables on her memory. Then, apparently more at ease, she added with
a smile,
"Why did you come to this house? Not to do me harm?"
"To do you good, little friend."
The girl smiled again, and again lowered her eyes, only to raise them
once more to Monsalvat's face.
"Little friend--I like those words! Will you really be my friend,
really, in your heart? It does me good to hear you speak to me that
way. You don't know what it means to me to be told I am not bad. But,
just the same, I am bad! Only I do everything I can to make people
think I am even worse than I am."
She spoke in a yet lower tone as she went on, somewhat ill at ease from
the intimacy of her confession:
"We girls have to make a show of being what we are not. It's easier
that way for us to forget our real selves: we seem to become somebody
else. I even go so far as not to blame the girl I was yesterday for all
that makes me the girl I am today."
She was silent awhile, apparently searching her memory.
"Why do you try so hard to forget?" asked Monsalvat, "Wouldn't it be
better to remember--if the present is so sad?"
"Sad? No, it isn't sad. Other people might think so. But really it
isn't. It is worse than that rather: it is empty, without any feeling
at all. We live in a sort of perpetual confusion. It's almost like not
knowing whether you're alive or not."
"But why not remember what is good in the past? Why not dream?"
"Remember?" Her expression suggested that a world full of past
sufferings had taken possession of her imagination.
"Why remember? Just to feel bad?"
"Yes, little friend, to feel, and to suffer. If you didn't suffer,
you would be horrible, all of you. It is because you suffer that you
deserve pity and sympathy; and so you ought to seek out pain, and
treasure it."
Nacha raised her hands to her face. In his own trouble, and in the
compassion Nacha aroused in him, Monsalvat began to feel a kind of
satisfaction. If she could still feel so deeply, there was hope.
"No, no!" she broke out suddenly. "We haven't the right to suffer!"
"Human beings have no greater and more sacred right."
"But don't you see that we girls must always be gay, dance, laugh: our
profession is joy, not suffering. If we're glum, we lose our jobs. If
we are not ready for gaiety and caresses, we're accused of not earning
our pay."
Her lips smiled bitterly. Monsalvat, sitting with one elbow on his
knee, and his chin resting on his hand, was looking at her as though
trying to drink in her very soul.
"We have to make ourselves over," Nacha continued, "change our natures
as well as our names. Do you think it is only out of shame, or because
of our families, that we hide our identities? No, it isn't wholly that.
Taking another name makes us seem different somehow. It's like the
Carnival. Under a disguise, you can do and say all the crazy things
that come into your head. Are you ashamed afterwards? No, because when
you take off your mask you are no longer the person who played all
those wild pranks."
"And last night"--Monsalvat asked, after a brief pause, "why were you
so unhappy?"
Through his conversation with Torres he knew the answer to this
question; yet he listened anxiously for her reply.
"There you see what comes of being out of sorts!" she said at last.
"Why should anyone go to a cabaret to gloom and whimper like a
simpleton? Pampa had a right to be angry. I couldn't help it. I had
just learned that the only real friend I ever had, the only man I ever
really loved, was dying.... And you can imagine how I feel today.
It's lucky I can be alone.... I can afford to let myself cry ... and
remember!..."
Monsalvat had started at these words. He was glad to know that Nacha
was still capable of feeling. At the same time, what she said about her
love for Riga filled him with a vague uneasiness. Interrupting, he told
her that he had known the poet.
"You knew him? Really? When? Where?"
From that moment Nacha looked upon Monsalvat as a brother. The wave of
feeling carrying her towards him reached its height. She warmly took
his hand for a moment and asked him to talk to her about Carlos Riga.
There was tenderness in her eyes now. The last vestiges of distrust had
vanished. She could have told him everything in her life, shown him
the very bottom of her soul. He had known Riga! He need offer no other
credentials to claim her friendship!
They talked a long time of the poet, whom Monsalvat had met through
Edward Iturbide. The two men had never become intimate friends; for
Monsalvat did not frequent the literary Bohemia that had known Riga
best. Nacha eagerly sang the praises of her dead friend. Never had
there lived so fine a soul, so generous a heart, so kind a spirit!
Talking of him seemed to intoxicate her. She spoke confusedly, and at
times wildly, in a jerky monologue of broken phrases. The moment came
when her eyes filled with tears and she shook with emotion.
"And to think that I, who am speaking to you like this, I left him--the
best man who ever breathed! All because I was afraid of poverty, afraid
of hunger! It's true I've suffered, Monsalvat, in the life I have been
leading: no one can know how much. But all I have been through was
nothing compared to the despair I felt when I deserted Riga...."
The poor girl began to sob with great gasps that shook her from head to
foot. Monsalvat tried to comfort her in words that astonished him, as
he uttered them, for their consoling intensity: never had he heard nor
spoken such words before. They seemed to well up from the very depths
of suffering in which the girl before him was engulfed.
"I remember so well the morning when I left him," Nacha continued,
"I shall remember it all the days God lets me live. We had a poor
little room, dark, without air, the most miserable hole in a horrible
tenement; and we had no furniture--just two wretched cots, old and
broken and dirty. I hadn't slept that night, for I was crying all the
time, going over my plans, and imagining how he would feel when he
found I had gone."
She stopped a moment to check a sob, and then went on:
"At daybreak I dressed and made a little bundle of the few rags I
owned, and all quite calmly. I wanted to put off the terrible moment as
long as I could. But at last it came. I was going to leave him--and he
loved me! It was so hard to do what I had made up my mind I must do. I
went to take a last look at him. He was still asleep. I crept up to him
on tiptoe, and kissed him, on the forehead. I don't know what happened
then: I had to lean against the wall, for it seemed as though the whole
world were falling away from me. My heart must have stopped beating. I
thought I was dying and stayed there a long time, without moving, just
stupified. When I could move I sat down on my cot and cried, then I got
up to go. Every step hurt. I went so slowly, it seemed as though years
must have passed--and at the door I looked back.--Why was I leaving
him? Why? Why?... At last I crept out into the hall, and began to run,
to run like mad, down the stairs, and out into the street...."
"You must tell me your whole life, from the time when you left your
mother's," said Monsalvat after a pause.
Nacha hesitated, unwilling for a moment to comply. At last she told
him her first tragic adventure; her love affair with one of the
young men boarding in her mother's house; his brutality towards her
when her timidity and shame placed her at his mercy; his attempts to
exploit her, and the illness that followed. She recounted her attempts
to support herself, afterwards, by honest work, the usual story of
poverty, temptation and despair.
"There was no help for me. What could I do? I struggled from week to
week; but debts, hunger, the need of clothes to put on my back, the
luxury I saw around me!... One day I told a girl who worked in the
store and was my friend that I would do whatever she advised ... and
she took me to a house she knew...."
Nacha lowered her eyes, shame-faced.
"Did you live long in this fashion?" he asked when she had lapsed into
silence.
"Six months! Then one day I couldn't stand it any longer: I left
the store; and never went back to that house. I did sewing, I made
artificial flowers; but ... I had no luck. I took any work that came
my way; but there were always back debts to pay off ... and all the
while every man who came near me made love to me. More than once I
left my job in order to get away from them.... I hated them, feared
them, loathed them. At last, after several years of this struggle, I
got a job as waitress in a café. There I was more annoyed by men than
ever; but I earned enough to be able to afford a decent room and some
furniture of my own. And there I met Riga!"
"And then?"
"After I left him? I went down again, this time for good and all. It
was then that Arnedo took me."
They were silent for a space. Nacha did not move. Wide-eyed, she sat
staring straight in front of her. What did she see? What were her
thoughts? Monsalvat, watching her with an intensity that he had never
before experienced, thought the critical moment had come.
"Nacha," he said, "you must get out of all this!"
Without looking at him, she slowly shook her head.
"But your repentance...?"
"I do not repent." The words came out slowly and deliberately, and she
turned to look straight at Monsalvat. "I did not intend any wrong. What
should I repent for?"
"But you are dissatisfied with the way you're living?"
"God knows! I have suffered frightfully. How could one help being sorry
for such an unhappy life?"
"Well then, why don't you make up your mind to leave it?"
"I want to, but I can't. It's Fate! I was destined to be a bad woman!"
All the energy of his spirit rushed to Monsalvat's lips in words
frantically shaped to arouse in Nacha the decisive will to free herself
from evil, to find good at last. He seized both her hands. Feebly she
tried to pull away from him.
"Nacha, you must change your way of living. You must be yourself!
You must cease being someone else! You must learn to live! To live,
do you hear? So as to be able to dream, to love--to remember! Your
soul wants to be free, and together we are going to free it. This is
slavery! You have been speaking of what you have already suffered.
But that is nothing to the agonies that lie in wait for you. Youth
too will leave you; and the day will come when you will be old, sick,
worn out, a human rag, falling lower and lower. At last you will be,
not only morally, but physically, a slave--The trader who is even now
awaiting you will get you into his clutches. You will become a beast of
pleasure, locked up in a house of evil; and you will have lost life,
and hope--and love, too; for love has little to do with the criminal
instincts of the men who will live on what you earn. You will be sold
like a thing, at auction. 'How much is this woman worth? So much--take
her! She is yours!' And then you will fall so low that only the dens of
the underworld, only the gutters of the slums, will be open to you; for
you will be old, your beauty eaten away.... Then finally you will die
and no one will know that you have gone. Then Nacha, you, you whom I
am speaking to now, will be tossed into the potter's field like a dead
dog."
She was in a paroxysm of weeping now, writhing under this merciless
attack, throwing back her head and tossing out her arms in tragic
appeal to him to stop.
There was a ring at the front door.
Nacha started to her feet, and tried to remove the traces of her
weeping. However, it was only the servant bringing in a letter from
Arnedo. Nacha, dazed, had not the courage to open it. She asked
Monsalvat to read it to her. Arnedo announced that he was dining that
evening with some friends. Taking the letter Nacha stood motionless and
silent, staring straight before her. When Monsalvat spoke, she neither
answered nor looked up. A tragic expression settled on her face. She
was trembling violently. Suddenly, raising her hands to her head, she
cried:
"No, no, it can't be! It is madness. Go away at once! I never want to
see you again. I was crazy. Go, I say!"
Monsalvat looked at her in amazement. He did not know what to do. Could
he have lost her? Why a moment ago it seemed.... He tried to speak, to
explain. But she pointed to the door with an obstinacy and an energy
he had not dreamed she possessed. There was nothing for it but to
obey--but this was an overwhelming catastrophe falling on his life....
His heart was breaking.... As he left the room Nacha did not even bid
him good-bye.
Arnedo's two lines had sufficed to remind her of reality, or rather
of what she believed reality to be. With a great effort she stopped
weeping and recalling scenes of the dead past. She was a different
Nacha now; she was Lila, the tango dancer, Lila, the delight of the
cabarets. For a moment, she forgot even Riga.
But, towards five o'clock, her heart triumphed over her will. Suddenly,
desperately, fearful of being late, she put on her hat, rushed to the
street, and took a taxi to the cemetery.
The services had begun. Anxious not to be noticed, she hovered on
the edge of the cluster of people gathered there. It saddened her to
see that scarcely twenty of the poet's admirers had escorted him to
his grave. When they had all gone, she drew near to the spot where
her friend's body had been laid. Her handkerchief over her eyes, she
stood there a long time, motionless, clad in black, silently weeping,
an image of Grief itself. The sky was overcast; the cold drizzle was
gradually turning to rain. As the first gusts reached the mound on
which she lingered, Nacha slowly walked away, and returned to Arnedo's
apartment.