I
At about the age of thirty, tired of living all alone with no one to
love, Amadeo Zureda got married. This Zureda was a stocky fellow,
neither tall nor short, dark, thoughtful, and with a certain slow, sure
way of moving. The whole essence of his face, the soul of it--to speak
so--was rooted in the taciturn energy of the space between his eyebrows.
There you found the man, more than in the rough black mustache which cut
across his face; even more than in the thickness of his cheek-bones, the
squareness of his jaws, the hard solidity of his nose. His brow was
somber as an evil memory.
One after the other you might erase all the lines of that face, and so
long as you left the thick-tufted brows, you would not have changed the
expression of Amadeo Zureda. For there dwelt the whole spirit of the
man, reserved yet ardent.
His marriage rescued Rafaela, whom he made his wife, from the slavish
toil of a work-woman. Rafaela was just over eighteen, a buxom brunette
with big, roguish, black eyes. Her breath was sweet, her lips vivid, her
mobile hips full and inviting, like her breasts; and she had a
free-and-easy, energetic, enterprising way of walking. Joined to a kind
of untamed grace (just a bit vulgar, in the manner of a daughter of the
people), she possessed a certain distinction both of face and manner, of
moving, of showing likes and dislikes, that enhanced and exalted her
beauty. Her hands were small and well cared for. She liked fine shoes
and starched petticoats that frou-froued as she walked.
Her mind resembled her body. It was restless, lively and incapable of
keeping the same point of view for very long. When she talked, those
coquettish eyes of hers shone brighter than ever, with enjoyment. Her
mouth was rather large; her teeth dazzling; and the light of laughter
always shone there like an altar-lamp.
Amadeo worshiped her. When he came home at night from work, Rafaela ran
to meet him with noisy jubilation and then cuddled herself caressingly
on his knees, after he had sat down. All this filled Zureda with
ineffable joy, so that he became quite speechless, in ecstasy. At such
times even the thoughtful scar of the wrinkle between his brows grew
less severe, in the calm gravity of his dark forehead.
The newly married couple took lodgings on the sixth floor of a house not
far from the Estación del Norte. The house was new, and their apartment
was full of sun and cheer, with big, well-lighted rooms. They had a
couple of balconies, too; and these the busy, artistic hands of Rafaela
kept smothered in flowers.
Amadeo was a locomotive-engineer. The company liked him well and more
than well. During the two years he had been on the Madrid-Bilbao run he
had never been called in for reprimand. He was intelligent and a hard
worker. Fifteen hours he could stand up to the job, and still see just
as clearly as ever with those black, powerful eyes of his. In his
corduroys, this muscular, dark-skinned, impassive man reminded you of a
bronze.
He was devoted to his job. He had learned engineering in the States,
which everybody knows is a master-country for railroading. His parents
had both died when he was very young. He had dedicated the whole
plenitude of his affections, his sap and vigor as a single man, to his
work. Foot by foot he knew the right-of-way from Madrid to Bilbao in its
most intimate details, so that he could have made that run blindfolded,
just as safely as if he had been walking about his own house. There were
clumps of trees, ravines, rivers, hills and farms that, to his eyes, had
the decisive meaning of a watch or a map.
"At such-and-such a place," he would think, "I've got to jam the brakes
on; there's a down-grade just beyond." Or else: "Here's the bridge. It
must be so-and-so o'clock." His grip on such ideas of time and space was
always exactly right. He seemed infallible. Zureda knew that all these
inanimate objects, scattered along the line, were so many faithful
friends incapable of deceiving him.
He shared this fetichistic love of the landscape with the love inspired
in him by his engines. Ordinarily he ran two: No. 187 and No. 1,082. He
called the first "Nigger," and the second "Sweetie." Nigger was an
intractable brute, ill-tempered and hard-bitted. When she tackled a hill
she seemed to quiver with pain, and in her iron belly strange
threatening shrieks resounded. She skidded downhill and was hard to get
under control. You would have said some wayward spirit was thrashing
about inside her, eternally rebelling against all government. She was
logy, at times, and hated to start; but once you got her going you had a
proper job to stop her. When she rushed in under the black arch of a
tunnel, her whistle shrieked with ear-splitting alarum, like a man
screeching.
"Sweetie" was a different sort, meek, obedient, strong and good-willed
on an up-grade, cautious and full of reserve on a down, when the
headlong flight of the train had to be checked.
Twice a week, each time that Amadeo started on a run, his wife always
asked him:
"Which machine have you got, to-day?"
If it was "Sweetie," she had nothing to worry about.
"That's all right," she would say. "But the other one! I certainly am
afraid of it. It's bad luck, sure!"
Zureda, however, liked to handle both of them. Sometimes he preferred
one, sometimes the other, according to the state of his nerves. When his
mood was cheerful, he liked "Sweetie" best, because there wasn't much
work about running her. He preferred her, usually, on quiet days, when
the sun was giving the earth a big, warm kiss. Zureda's fireman was a
chap named Pedro; an Andalusian, full of spicy songs and tales. Amadeo
rather liked to hear these, always keeping his eyes fixed on blue
distances that seemed to smile at him. Out ahead, over the boiler, the
rails stretched on and on, shining like silver in the sun. The warm air
blew about Zureda, laden with sweet country smells. Under his feet the
engineer felt the shuddering of "Sweetie," tame, laborious, neither
bucking nor snorting; and at such times, both proud and caressing as if
he loved her, he would murmur:
"Get along with you, my pretty lamb!"
At other times the engineer's full-blooded vigor suffered vague
irritations and capricious rages, unwholesome disturbances of temper
which made him unwilling to talk, and dug still deeper the grim line
between his brows. Then it was that he preferred to take out "Nigger."
Stubborn, menacing, rebellious against all his demands, the fight she
gave him--a fight always potentially dangerous--acted as a sedative to
his nerves and seemed to pacify him. At such times Pedro, the Andalusian
with the risqué stories and the spicy songs, felt the numbing, evil
humor of his engineer, and grew still.
All along the line, chiming into the uproarious quiverings of the engine
and the whistling gusts of wind, a long colloquy of hate seemed to
develop between the man and the machine. Zureda would grit his teeth and
grunt:
"Go on, you dog! Some hill--but you've got to make it! Come on, get to
it!"
Then he would fling open the furnace door, burning red as any Hell-pit,
and with his own furious hand would fling eight or ten shovels of coal
into the firebox. The machine would shudder, as if lashed by punishment.
Enraged snorts would fill her; and from her smoking shoulders something
like a wave of hate seemed to stream back.
Zureda always came home from trips like these bringing some present or
other for his wife; perhaps a pair of corsets, a fur collar, a box of
stockings. The wife, knowing just the time when the express would get
in, always went out on the balcony to see it pass. Her husband never
failed to let her know he was coming, from afar, by blowing a long
whistle-blast.
If she were still abed when the train arrived, she would jump up, fling
on a few clothes and run to the balcony. Her joyous face would smile out
at the world from the green peep-holes through the plants in their
flower-pots. In a moment or two she could see the train among the wooded
masses of Moncloa. On it came with a roar and a rattle, hurling its
undulating black body along the polished rails. Joyously the engineer
waved his handkerchief at her, from the engine-cab; and only at times
like these did his brow--to which no smile ever lent complete
contentment--smooth itself out a little and seem almost happy.
Amadeo Zureda desired nothing. His work was hard, but all he needed to
make him glad was just the time between runs--two nights a week--that he
spent in Madrid. His whole brusque but honest soul took on fresh youth
there, under the roof of his peaceful home, surrounded by the simple
pieces of furniture that had been bought one at a time. This was all the
reward he wanted. The cold that pierced his bones, out there in the
storms along the railway-line, gradually changed to a glow of warmth in
the caressing arms of his wife. Body and soul both fell asleep there in
the comfort of a happy and sensual well-being.