It hardly takes more than a couple of years of married life to age a
docile man; or at least--about the same thing--to fill him with those
forward-looking ideas of caution, economy and peace that sow the seed of
fear for the morrow, in quiet souls.
One time Zureda was laid up a while with a bad cold. Getting better of
this, the engineer on a momentous night spoke seriously to his wife
concerning their future. His bronzed face lying on the whiteness of the
pillows brought out the salience of his cheek-bones and the strength of
his profile. The vertical furrow between his brows seemed deeper than
ever, cut into the serene gravity of his forehead. His wife listened to
him attentively, sitting on the edge of the bed, with one leg crossed
over the other. She cradled the upper knee between joined hands.
Slowly the engineer's talk unwound itself, to the effect that life is a
poor thing at best, constantly surrounded by misfortunes that can strike
us in an infinitude of ways. To-day it's a cold draft, to-morrow a chill
or a sore throat, or maybe a cancer, that death uses to steal our lives
away. All about us, yawning like immense jaws, the earth is always
opening, the earth into which all of us must some time descend; and in
this very swift and savagely universal hecatomb no one can be sure of
witnessing both the rising and the setting of the same day.
"I'm not afraid of work, you know," went on Zureda, "but engines are
made of iron, and even so they wear out at last and get tired of
running. Men are just the same. And when it happens to me, as it's got
to, some day, what'll become of us, then?"
Calmly Rafaela shook her head. She by no means shared her husband's
fears. No doubt Amadeo's sickness had made him timorous and pessimistic.
"I think you're making it worse than it really is," she answered. "Old
age is still a long way off; and, besides, very likely we'll have
children to help us."
Zureda's gesture was a negation.
"That don't matter," he replied. "Children may not come at all; and even
if they do, what of that? As for old age being far off, you're wrong.
Even to-day, do you think I've got the strength and quickness, or even
the enjoyment in my work, that I had when I was twenty-five? Not on your
life! Old age is certainly coming, and coming fast. So I tell you again
we've got to save something.
"If we do, when I can no longer run an engine I'll open a little
machine-shop; and if I should die suddenly, leaving you fifteen or
twenty thousand _pesetas_,[A] you could easily start a good laundry in
some central location, for that's the kind of work you understand."
[A] Three or four thousand dollars.
To all this Zureda added a number of other arguments, discreet and
weighty, so that his wife declared herself convinced. The engineer
already had a plan laid out, that made him talk this way. Among the
people who had come to see him, while he had been sick, was one Manolo
Berlanga, whose friendship with him had been brotherly indeed. This
Berlanga had a job at a silversmith's shop in the Paseo de San Vincente.
He had no relatives, and made rather decent wages. A good many times he
had told Zureda how much he wanted to find some respectable house where
he could live in a decent, private way, paying perhaps four or five
pesetas a day for board and room.
"Suppose, now," went on Amadeo, "that Manolo should pay five pesetas a
day; that's thirty _duros_ a month--thirty good dollars--and the house
costs us eight dollars. Well, that leaves us twenty-two dollars a month,
and with that, and a few dollars that I'll put in, we can all live
high."
To this Rafaela consented, rather stirred by the new ideas awakened by
the innovation. The silversmith was a free-and-easy, agreeable young
fellow, who chattered all the time and played the guitar in no mean
fashion.
"Yes, but how about a place for him?" asked she. "Is there any? What
room could we give him?"
"Why, the little alcove off the dining-room, of course."
"Yes, I was thinking of that, too. But it's mighty small, and there's no
light in it."
The engineer shrugged his shoulders.
"It's good enough just to sleep in!" he exclaimed. "If we were dealing
with a woman, that would be different. But we men get along any old way,
all right."
Rafaela wrote to Berlanga next day, at her husband's request, telling
him to come and see them. Promptly on the dot the silversmith arrived.
He looked about twenty-eight, wore tightly-belted velveteen trousers
gaitered under the shoe, and a dark overcoat with astrakhan collar and
cuffs. He was of middle height, lean, pale-faced, with a restless
manner, a fluent, witty way of talking. On some pretext or other the
wife went out, leaving the two men to chew things over and come to an
agreement.
"Now, as for living with you people," said Berlanga, "I'll be very glad
to give five pesetas per. Or I'll better that, if you say so."
"No, no, thanks," answered Zureda. "I don't want to be bargaining with
you. We can all help each other. You and I are like brothers, anyhow."
That night after supper, Rafaela dragged all the useless furniture out
of the dining-room alcove and swept and scoured it clean. Next day she
got up early to go to a hard-by pawnshop, where she bought her an iron
bed with a spring and a woolen mattress. This bed she carefully set up,
and fixed it all fine and soft. A couple of chairs, a washstand and a
little table covered with a green baize spread completed the furnishing
of the room.
After everything was ready, the young woman dressed and combed herself
to receive the guest, who arrived about the middle of the afternoon with
his luggage, to wit: a box with his workman's tools, a trunk and a
little cask. This cask held a certain musty light wine, which--so
Berlanga said, after coffee and one of Zureda's cigars had made him
expansive--had been given him by a "lady friend" of his who ran a
tavern.
A few days passed, days of unusual pleasure to the engineer and his
wife, for the silversmith was a man of joyful moods and very fond of
crooking his elbow, so that his naturally fertile conversation became
hyperbolically colored and quite Andalusian in its exuberance. At
dessert, the merry quips of Berlanga woke sonorous explosions of
hilarity in Amadeo. When he laughed, the engineer would lean his massive
shoulders against the back of the chair. Now and again, as if to
underscore his bursts of merriment, he would deal the table shrewd
blows. After this he would slowly emit his opinions; and if he had to
advise Berlanga, he did it in a kind of paternal way, patiently,
good-naturedly.
When he was quite well again, Amadeo went back to work. The morning he
took leave of his wife, she asked him:
"Which engine have you got, to-day?"
"Nigger," he answered.
"My, what bad luck! I'm afraid something's going to happen to you!"
"Rubbish! Why should it? _I_ can handle her!"
He kissed Rafaela, tenderly pressing her against his big, strong breast.
At this moment an unwholesome thought, grotesquely cruel, cut his mind
like a whip; a thought that he would pass the night awake, out in the
storm, in the engine-cab, while there in Madrid another man would be
sleeping under the same roof with his wife. But this unworthy suspicion
lasted hardly a second. The engineer realized that Berlanga, though a
riotous, dissipated chap, was at heart a brotherly friend, far from base
enough to betray him in any such horrible manner.
Rafaela went with her husband to the stairway. There they both began
again to inflame each other with ardent kisses and embraces of farewell.
The wife's black eyes filled with tears as she told him to keep himself
well bundled up and to think often of her. Tears quite blinded her.
"What a good lass she is!" murmured Zureda.
And as he recalled the poisonous doubt of a moment before, the man's
ingenuous nobility felt shame.
* * * * *
The life of Manolo Berlanga turned out to be pretty disreputable. He
liked wine, women and song, and many a time came home in the wee small
hours, completely paralyzed. This invariably happened during the absence
of the engineer. Next morning he was always very remorseful, and went
with contrition to the kitchen, where Rafaela was getting breakfast.
"Are you mad at me?" he used to ask.
She answered him in a maternal kind of way and told him to be good; this
always made him laugh.
"None o' that!" he used to say. "I don't like being good. That's one of
the many inflictions marriage forces on a man. Don't you have enough
'being good' in this house, with Amadeo?"
Among men, love is often nothing more than the carnal obsession produced
in them by the constant and repeated sight of one and the same woman.
Every laugh, every motion of the woman moving about them possesses a
charm at first hardly noticed. But after a while, under the spell of a
phenomenon we may call cumulative, this charm waxes potent; it grows
till some time it unexpectedly breaks forth in an enveloping, conquering
passion.
Now one morning it happened that Manolo Berlanga was eating breakfast in
the dining-room before going to the shop. Rafaela, her back toward him,
was scrubbing the floor of the hallway.
"How you do work, my lady!" cried the silversmith, jokingly.
Her answer was a gay-toned laugh; then she went on with her task,
sometimes recoiling so that she almost sat on her heels, again
stretching her body forward with an energy that lowered the
tight-corseted slimness of her waist and set in motion the fullness of
her yielding hips. The silversmith had often seen her thus, without
having paid any heed; but hardly had he come to realize her sensual
appeal when the flame of desire blazed up in him.
"There's a neat one for you!" thought he.
And he kept on looking at her, his vicious imagination dwelling on the
perfections of that carnal flower, soft and vibrant. His brown study
continued a while. Then suddenly, with the brusqueness of ill-temper, he
got up.
"Well, so long!" said he.
He stopped in the stairway to greet a neighbor and light a cigarette. By
the time he had reached the street-door he had forgotten all about
Rafaela. But, later, his desire once more awoke. At dinner he
dissimulated his observations of the young woman's bare arms. Strong and
well-molded they were, those arms, and under the cloth of her sleeves
rolled up above the elbow, the flesh swelled exuberantly.
"Hm! You haven't combed your hair, to-day," said Berlanga.
She answered with a laugh--one of those frankly voluptuous laughs that
women with fine teeth enjoy.
"You're right," said she. "You certainly notice everything. I didn't
have time."
"It don't matter," answered the gallant. "Pretty women always look best
that way, with their hair flying and their arms bare."
"You mean that, really?"
"I certainly do!"
"Then you've got the temperament and makings of a married man."
"_I_ have?"
"Sure!"
"How's that?"
She laughed again, gayly, coquettishly, adding:
"Because you already know that married women generally don't pay much
attention to their husbands. That's what hurts marriage--women not
caring how they look."
So they went on talking away, and all through their rather spicy
conversation, full of meaning, a mutual attraction began to make itself
felt. Silently this began sapping their will-power. At last the woman
glanced at her clock on the sideboard.
"Eight o'clock," said she. "I wonder what Amadeo's doing, now?"
"Well, that's according," answered Berlanga. "When did he get to
Bilbao?"
"This morning."
"Then he's probably been asleep part of the time, and now I guess he's
playing dominoes in some café. And we, meantime--we're here--you and
I----"
"And you don't feel very well, eh?" she asked.
"I?"
Looking at Rafaela with eloquent steadiness he slowly added:
"I feel a damn sight better than _he_ does!"
Then, while he drank his coffee, the silversmith laid out on the table
his board-money for that week. He began to count:
"Two and two's four--nine--eleven--thirty-eight pesetas. Rotten week
I've had! Say, I've hardly pulled down enough for my drinks."
He got together seven dollars, piled them up--making a little column of
silver change--and shoved them over to Rafaela.
"Here you go!" said he.
She blushed, as she answered. You would have thought her offended by the
somewhat hostile opposition of debtor and creditor that the money seemed
to have set up between them. She asked:
"What's all this you're giving me?"
"Say! What d'you suppose? Don't I pay every week? Well, then, here's my
board. Seven days at five pesetas per, that's just thirty-five pesetas,
huh? What's the matter with you?"
He made the coins jump and jingle in his agile hand, well-used to
dealing cards. Then he added:
"To-day's Saturday. So then, I'll pay you now. That'll leave me three
pesetas for extras--tobacco and car-fare. Oh, it's a fine time _I'll_
have!"
With a lordly gesture, good-natured, protecting, the woman handed back
Berlanga's money.
"Next week you can pay up," said she. "I'm fixed all right. By luck,
even if I'm not five dollars to the good, I'm not five to the bad."
The silversmith offered the money again. But this time the offer was
weak, and was made only in the half-hearted way that seemed necessary to
keep him in good standing. Then he got up from the table, rubbed his
hands up and down his legs to smooth the ugly bulge out of the knees of
his trousers, pulled down his vest and readjusted the knot of his cravat
before the mirror. He exclaimed with a kind of boastful swagger:
"D'you know what I'm thinking?"
"Tell me!"
"Oh, I don't dare."
"Why not?"
"You might get mad at me."
"No, no!"
"Promise you won't?"
"On my word of honor! Come on, now, say anything you like, and _I_ won't
mind."
"Well--how about--_him_?"
"I know what I'm doing!"
"Yes, but--see here! You don't care a hang for me, anyhow. You don't
think very much of _me_!
"I do, too! I think a lot!"
She looked at him in a gay, provocative manner, stirred to the depths of
her by such a strong, overpowering caprice that it almost seemed love.
Expansively the silversmith answered:
"Well, then, since we've got money and we're all alone, why don't we
take in a dance, to-night?"
The whole Junoesque body of the young woman--a true Madrid
type--trembled with joy. It had been a long time since she had had any
such amusement; not since her marriage had she danced. Zureda, something
of a stick-in-the-mud and in no wise given to pleasures, had never
wanted to take her to any dances, not even to a masquerade. A swarm of
joyful visions filled her memory. Ah, those happy Sundays when she had
been single! Saturday nights, at the shop, she and the other girls had
made dates for the next day. Sometimes they had visited the dance-halls
at Bombilla. Other times they had gone to Cuatro Caminos or Ventas del
Espiritu Santo. And once there, what laughter and what joy! What strange
emotions of half fear, half curiosity they had felt at sensing the
desire of whatever man had asked them to dance!
Rafaela straightened up, quick, pliant, transfigured.
"You aren't any more willing to ask me, than I am to go!" said she.
"Well, why not, then?" demanded the silversmith. "Let's go, right now!
Let's take a run out to Bombilla, and not leave as long as we've got a
cent!"
The young woman fairly jumped for joy, skipped out of the dining-room,
tied a silk handkerchief over her head and most fetchingly threw an
embroidered shawl over her shoulders. She came back, immediately. Her
little high-heeled, pointed, patent-leather boots and her
fresh-starched, rustling petticoats echoed her impatience. She went up
to Berlanga, took him familiarly by the arm, and said:
"I tell you, though, I'm going to pay half."
The silversmith shook his head in denial. She added, positively:
"That's the only way I'll go. Aren't we both going to have a good time?
That's fair, for us both to pay half."
Berlanga accepted this friendly arrangement. As soon as they got into
the street they hired a carriage. At Bombilla they had a first-rate
supper and danced their heads off, till long past midnight. They went
home afoot, slowly, arm in arm. Rafaela had drunk a bit too much, and
often had to stop. Dizzy, she leaned her head on the silversmith's
breast. Manolo, himself a bit tipsy and out of control, devoured her
with his eyes.
"Say, you're a peach!" he murmured.
"Am I, really?"
"Strike me blind if you're not! Pretty, eh? More than that! You're a
wonder--oh, great! The best I ever saw, and I've seen a lot!"
She still had enough wit left to pretend not to hear him, playing she
was ill. She stammered:
"Oh, I--I'm so sick!"
Suddenly Berlanga exclaimed:
"If Zureda and I weren't pals----"
Silence. The silversmith added, warming to the subject:
"Rafaela, tell me the truth. Isn't it true that Amadeo stands in our
way?"
She peered closely at him, and afterward raised her handkerchief to her
eyes. She gave him no other answer. And nothing more happened, just
then.
* * * * *
During the monotonous passage of a few more days, Manolo Berlanga
gradually realized that Rafaela had big, expressive eyes, small feet
with high insteps and a most pleasant walk. He noted that her breasts
were firm and full; and he even thought he could detect in her an
extremely coquettish desire to appear attractive in his eyes. At the end
of it all, the silversmith fully understood his own intentions, which
caused him both joy and fear.
"She's got me going," he thought. "She's certainly got me going! Say,
I'm crazy about that woman!"
At last, one evening, the ill-restrained passion of the man burst into
an overwhelming torrent. On that very night, Zureda was going to come
home. Hardly had Manolo Berlanga left the shop when he hurried to his
lodgings. He had no more than reached the front room when--no longer
able to restrain his evil thoughts--he asked:
"Has Amadeo got here, yet?"
"He'll be here in about fifteen minutes," answered Rafaela. "It's nine
o'clock, now. The train's already in. I heard it whistle."
Berlanga entered the dining-room and saw that the young woman was making
up his bed. He approached her.
"Want any help?" he asked.
"No, thanks!"
Suddenly, without knowing what he was about, he grabbed her round the
waist. She tried to defend herself, turning away, pushing him from her.
But, kissing her desperately, he murmured:
"Come now, quick, quick--before he gets here!"
Then, after a brief moment of silent struggle:
"Darling! Don't you see? It had to be this way----!"
The wife of Zureda did not, in fact, put up much of a fight.
* * * * *
A year later, Rafaela gave birth to a boy. Manolo Berlanga stood
godfather for it. Both Rafaela and Amadeo agreed on naming it Manolo
Amadeo Zureda. The baptism was very fine; they spent more than two
thousand _reals_[B] on it.
[B] About $100.
How pink-and-white, how joyous, how pretty was little Manolín! The
engineer, congratulated by everybody, wept with joy.