IV

Truth, however, is mighty and will prevail. After a while Zureda began

to observe that something odd was going on about him. Slowly and without

knowing why, he found a sort of distance separating him from his

companions, who treated him and looked at him in a new way. You would

almost have said they were trying to extort from his eyes the confession

of some risqué secret he was doubtless keeping well covered up and

hidden; a secret everybody knew. A complex sentiment of curiosity and

silence isolated him from his friends and seemed to befog him with

inexplicable ridicule. After a while he grew much puzzled by this

phenomenon.

"I wonder if I've changed?" thought he. "Maybe I'm sick, without knowing

it. Or can it be that I'm mighty ugly, and nobody dares to tell me so?"

Not far from the station, and near Manzanares Street, there was an

eating-house where the porters, engineers and firemen were wont to

foregather. This establishment belonged to Señor Tomás, who in his youth

had been a toreador. The aplomb and force, as well as the

stout-heartedness of that brave, gay profession still remained his.

Señor Tomás talked very little, and for those who knew him well his

words had the authority of print. He was a tall old fellow, with

powerful hands and shoulders; he wore velveteen trousers and little

Andalusian jackets of black stuff; and over the sash with which he

masked his growing girth he strapped a wide leather belt with a silver

buckle.

One evening Señor Tomás was enjoying the air at the door of his

eating-house when Zureda passed by. The tavern-keeper beckoned the

engineer; and when Zureda had come near, looked fixedly into his eyes

and said:

"You and I have got to have a few words."

Zureda remained dumb. The secret, chill vibration of an evil

presentiment had passed like a cold wind through his heart. Presently

recovering speech, he answered:

"Any time you say so."

They reëntered the tavern, which just then was almost without patrons. A

high wooden shelf, painted red and covered with bottles, ran about the

room. On the wall was hung the stuffed head of the bull that had given

Señor Tomás the tremendous gash which had torn his leg open and had

obliged him to lay aside forever the garb of a toreador. At the rear,

the bartender had fallen asleep behind the polished bar, on which a

little fountain of water was playing its perpetual music.

The two men sat down at a big table, and the tavern-keeper clapped his

hands together.

"Hey you, there!" he cried.

The bartender woke up and came to him.

"What'll you have?" asked he.

"Bring some olives and two cups of wine."

A long pause followed. Señor Tomás with voracious pulls at his

smoldering cigar set its tip glowing. A kind of gloomy preoccupation

hardened his close-shaven face--a face that showed itself bronzed and

fleshy beneath the white hair grandly combed and curled upon his

forehead.

Presently he began:

"I hate to see two men fight, because if they're spirited it's bound to

be serious. But still I can't bear to see a good man and a hard-working

man be made a laughing-stock for everybody. Get me?"

Amadeo Zureda first grew pale and then red. Yes, he knew something was

up. The old man had called him to tell him some terrible mystery. He

felt that the strange feeling of vacancy all about him, which he had

been sensing for some time, was at last going to be explained. He

trembled. Something black, something vast was closing over his head; it

might be one of those fearful tragedies that sometimes cut a human life

in twain.

"I don't know how to talk, and I don't like to talk," went on the

tavern-keeper. "That's why I don't beat round the bush, but I call a

spade a spade. Yes, sir, I call things by their right names. Because in

this world, Amadeo--you mark my words--everything's got a name."

"That's so, Señor Tomás."

"All right. And I'm one of those fellows that go right after the truth

the way I used to go after the bull--go the quickest way, which is the

best way, because it's the shortest."

"That's right, too."

"Well, then. I like you first-rate, Amadeo. I know you're a worker, and

I know you're one of those honest men that wouldn't stand for any

crooked work to turn a dollar. And I know, too, you're a man that knows

how to use his fists and how to run up the battle-flag of the soul, when

you have to. I'm sure of all this. And by the same token, I won't let

anybody make fun of you."

"Thanks, Señor Tomás."

"All right! Now, then, in my house, right here, people are saying your

wife is thick with Manolo Berlanga!"

The eyes of the tavern-keeper and the engineer met. They remained fixed,

so, a moment. Then the eyes of Zureda opened wide, seemed starting from

their sockets. Suddenly he jumped up, and his square finger-nails fairly

sank into the wood of the table. His white lips, slavering, stammered in

a fit of rage:

"That's a lie, a damned lie, Señor Tomás! I'll cut your heart out for

that! Yes, if the Virgin herself came down and told me that, I'd cut her

heart out, too! God, what a lie!"

The tavern-keeper remained entirely self-possessed. Without even a

change of expression he answered:

"All right! Find out what's true or false in this business. For you know

there's no difference between the truth and a lie that everybody's

telling. And if you decide there's nothing to this except what I say,

come and tell me, for I'm right here and everywhere to back up my

words!"

The tavern-keeper grew silent, and Amadeo Zureda remained motionless,

struck senseless, gaping.

After a few minutes his ideas began to calm down again, and as they grew

quiet they coordinated themselves; then the engineer felt an unwholesome

and resistless curiosity to know everything, to torture himself digging

out details.

"You mean to tell me," asked he, "that they've talked about that, right

here?"

"Right on the spot, sir!"

"When?"

"More than once, and more than twenty times; and they say worse than

that, too. They say Berlanga beats your wife, and you're wise to

everything, and have been from the beginning. And they say you stand for

it, to have a good thing, because this Berlanga fellow helps you pay the

rent."

A couple of porters came in, and interrupted the conversation. Señor

Tomás ended up with:

"Well now, you know all about it!"

When Zureda left the tavern, his first impulse was to go home and put it

up to Rafaela. Either with soft words or with a stick he might get

something about Berlanga out of her. But presently he changed his mind.

Affairs of this kind can't be hurried much. It is better to go slow, to

wait, to get information bit by bit and all by one's self. When he

reached the station it was six o'clock. He met Pedro on the platform.

"Which engine have we got to-day?" asked Amadeo.

"Nigger," answered the fireman.

"The devil! It just had to be her, eh?"

That run was terrible indeed, packed full of inward struggles and of

battles with the rebellious locomotive--an infernal run that Zureda

remembered all his life.

With due regard for the prudent scheme that he had mapped out, the

engineer set himself to observing the way his wife and Manolo had of

talking to each other. After greatly straining his attention, he could

find nothing in the cordial frankness of their relations that seemed to

pass the limits of good friendship. From the time when Berlanga had

stood godfather for little Manolo, Amadeo had begged them to use "thee"

and "thou" to each other, and this they had done. But this familiarity

seemed quite brother-and-sisterly; it seemed justified by the three

years they had been living in the same house, and could hardly be

suspected of hiding any guilty secret.

None the less, the jealousy of Zureda kept on growing, rooting itself in

every pretext, and using even the most minor thing to inflame and color

with vampire suspicion every thought of the engineer. The notion kept

growing in Zureda; it became an obsession which made him see the dreaded

vision constantly, just as through another obsession, Berlanga's desire

for Rafaela had been born.

At last Amadeo became convinced that his skill as a spy was very poor.

He lacked that astuteness, those powers of detection and that divining

instinct which, in a kind of second sight, makes some men get swiftly

and directly at the bottom of things. In view of his blunt character,

unfitted for any kind of diplomatic craft, he thought it better to

confront the matter face to face.

As soon as he had come by this resolution, his uneasiness grew calm. A

sedative feeling of peace took possession of his heart. The engineer

passed that day quietly reading, waiting for night to come. Rafaela was

sewing in the dining-room, with little Manolo asleep on her lap. Half an

hour before supper, Zureda tiptoed to their bedroom and took from the

little night-table his heavy-bladed, horn-handled hunting knife--the

knife he always carried on his runs. After that he put on a flat cap,

tied a muffler round his neck--for the evening was cold--and started to

leave the house. In the emptiness of the hallway his heavy, determined

footfalls, echoing, seemed to waken something deadly.

A bit surprised, Rafaela asked:

"Aren't you going to eat supper here?"

"Yes," he answered, "but I'm just going out to stretch my legs a little.

I'll be right back."

He kissed his wife and the boy, mentally taking a long farewell of them,

and went out.

In Señor Tomás' tavern he found Manolo Berlanga playing _tute_ with

several friends. The silversmith was drunk, and his arrogant, defiant

voice dominated the others. Slowly, with a careless and taciturn air,

the engineer approached the group.

"Good evening, all," said he.

At first, no one answered him, for everybody's attention was fixed on

the wayward come-and-go of the cards. When the game was done, one of the

players exclaimed:

"Hello there, Amadeo! I didn't see _you_! But I saw your wife and kid

yesterday. Some boy! And that's a pretty woman you've got, too. I don't

say that just because you're here. It's true. Anybody can see you make

all kinds of money, and spend it all on your wife!"

"Yes, and if he didn't," put in Berlanga, offering Zureda a glass of

wine, "there'd be plenty more who would. How about that, Amadeo?"

Zureda remained impassive. He gulped the wine at one swallow. Then he

ordered a bottle for all hands.

"Come on, now, I'll go you a game of _mus_," he challenged Berlanga.

"Antolín, here, will be my partner."

The silversmith accepted.

"Go to it!" said he.

The players all sat down around the table, and the game began.

"I'll open up."

"Pass."

"I'll stay in."

"I'm out."

"I'll stick."

"I'll raise that!"

"I renig!"

Now and then the players stopped for a drink, and a few daring bets

brought out bursts of laughter.

"Whose deal, now?"

"Mine!"

All at once Amadeo, who was looking for some excuse to get into a row

with the silversmith, cheated openly and took the pot. Manolo saw him

cheat. Incensed, he threw his cards on the floor.

"Here now, that don't go!" he cried. "I don't care if we _are_ friends,

you can't get away with _that_!"

All the other players, angered, backed up the silversmith.

"No, sir! No, that don't go, here!" they echoed.

Very quietly the engineer demanded:

"Well, what have _I_ done?"

"You threw away this card, the five o' clubs," replied Berlanga, "and

slipped yourself a king, that you needed! That's all. You're cheating!"

The engineer answered the furious insult of the silversmith with a blow

in the face. They tackled each other like a couple of cats. Chairs and

table rolled on the floor. Señor Tomás came running, and he and the

other players succeeded in separating them. A crowd, attracted by the

noise of the fight, gathered like magic. The tumult of these

curiosity-seekers helped Amadeo hide his words as he and Manolo left the

tavern. He said in his companion's ear:

"I'll be waiting for you in front of San Antonio de la Florida."

"Suits _me_!"

And, a few minutes later, they met at the indicated spot.

"Let's go where nobody can see us," said the engineer.

"I'll go anywhere you like," answered Berlanga. "Lead the way!"

They crossed the river and came to the little fields out at Fuente de la

Teja. The shadows were thicker there, under the trees. At a

likely-looking spot the two men stopped. Zureda peered all about him.

His eyes, used to penetrating dark horizons, seemed to grow calm. The

two men were all alone.

"I've brought you here," said the engineer, "either to kill you or have

you kill me."

Berlanga was pretty tipsy. Brave in his cups, he peered closely at the

other. He kept his hands in the pockets of his coat. His brow was

frowning; his chin was thrust out and aggressive. He had already guessed

what Zureda was going to ask him, and the idea of being catechized

revolted his pride.

"It looks to me," he swaggered, "like you and I were going to have a few

words."

And immediately he added, as if he could read the thought of Zureda:

"They've been telling you I'm thick with Rafaela, and you're after the

facts."

"Yes, that's it," answered the engineer.

"Well, they aren't lying. What's the use of lying? It's so, all right."

Then he held his peace and looked at Zureda. The engineer's eyes were

usually big and black, but now by some strange miracle of rage they had

become small and red. Neither man made any further speech. There was no

need of any. All the words they might have hurled at each other would

have been futile. Zureda recoiled a few steps and unsheathed his knife.

The silversmith snicked open a big pocket blade.

They fell violently on each other. It was a prehistoric battle, body to

body, savage, silent. Manolo was killed. He fell on his back, his face

white, his mouth twisted in an unforgettable grimace of pain and hate.

The engineer ran away and was already crossing the bridge, when a woman

who had been following him at a short distance began to cry:

"Catch him! Catch him! He's just killed a man!"

A couple of policemen, at the door of an inn, stopped Zureda. They

arrested him and handcuffed him. He made no resistance.

Rafaela went to see him in jail. The engineer, because of his love for

her and for the boy, received her with affection. He assured her he had

got into a fight with Manolo over a card-game. Fourteen or fifteen

months later he maintained the same story, in court. He claimed he and

Manolo had been playing _mus_, and that by way of a joke on his friends

he had thrown away one of the cards in his hand and slipped himself

another. Then he said Berlanga had denounced him as a cheat; they had

quarreled, and had challenged each other.

Thus spoke Amadeo Zureda, in his chivalric attempt not to throw even the

lightest shadow on the good name of the woman he adored. Who could have

acted more nobly than he? The state's attorney arraigned him in crushing

terms, implacably.

And the judge gave him twenty years at hard labor.

V

Scourged by poverty, which was not long in arriving, Rafaela had to move

away to a little village of Castile, where she had relatives. These were

poor farming people, making a hard fight for existence. By way of excuse

for her coming to them, the young woman made up a story. She said that

Amadeo had got into some kind of trouble with his employers, had been

discharged and had gone to Argentina, for there he had heard engineers

got excellent pay. After that, she had decided to leave Madrid, where

food and lodging were very dear. She ended her tale judiciously:

"As soon as I hear from Amadeo that he's got a good job, I'm going out

there to him."

Her relatives believed her, took pity on her and found her work. Every

day, with the first light of morning, Rafaela went down to the river to

wash. The river was about half a kilometer from the little village. By

washing and ironing, at times, or again by picking up wood in the

country and selling it, Rafaela managed, with hard, persistent toil, to

make four or five _reals_[C] a day.

[C] Twenty or twenty-five cents.

Two years passed. By this time the neighbors were beginning to find out

from the mail-carrier that the addresses on all the letters coming to

Rafaela were written by the same hand and all bore the postmark of

Ceuta. This news got about and set things buzzing. The young woman put

an end to folks' gossip by very sensibly confessing the truth that

Amadeo was in prison there. She said a gambling-scrape had got him into

trouble. In her confession she adopted a resigned and humble manner,

like a model wife who, in spite of having suffered much, nevertheless

forgives the man she loves, and pardons all the wrongs done her. People

called her unfortunate. They tattled a while, and then took pity on her

and accepted her.

Worn out by time and hardships, her former beauty--piquant in a way,

though a bit common--soon faded away. The sun tanned her skin; the dust

of the country roads got into her hair, once so clean and wavy; hard

work toughened and deformed her hands, which in better days she had well

cared for. She gave over wearing corsets, and this hastened the ruin of

her body. Slowly her breasts grew flaccid, her abdomen bulged, her whole

figure took on heavy fullnesses. And her clothes, too, bit by bit got

torn and spoiled. Her petticoats and stockings, her neat patent-leather

boots bought in happier days, disappeared sadly, one after the other.

Rafaela, who had lost all desire to be coquettish or to please men, let

herself slide into poverty; and, in the end, she sank so low as to slop

round the village streets, barefooted.

This disintegration of her will coincided with a serious loss and

confusion of her memory. The poor woman began to forget everything; and

the few recollections she still retained grew so disjointed, so vague

that they no longer were able to arouse any stimulating emotion in her.

She had never really loved Berlanga. What she had felt for him had been

only a kind of caprice, an unreasoning will o' the wisp passion; but

this amorous dalliance had soon faded out. And the only reason she had

kept on with the silversmith had been because she had been afraid of him

and had been weak-willed. The smith, moreover, had become jealous and

had often beaten her. Thus his tragic death, far from causing her any

grief, had come to her as an agreeable surprise. It had quieted her,

rested her, freed her.

If the punishment of Zureda and his confinement in prison walls wounded

her deeply, it was not on account of her broken love for the engineer.

No, rather was it because this disaster had disturbed the easy,

comfortable rhythm of her life and because the exile of her husband had

meant misery for her, poverty, the irremediable overthrow of her whole

future.

After the crisis which had wrecked her home, Rafaela--hardly noticing

it, herself--had grown stupid, old and of defective memory. The many

violent and dramatic shocks she had borne in so short a time had

annihilated her mediocre spirit. She suffered no remorse and had no very

clear idea as to whether her past conduct had been good or bad. It was

as if her conscience had sunk away into unthinking stupor. The only

thing that still remained in her, unchanged, was the maternal instinct

of living and working for little Manolo, so that he, too, might live.

True enough, on certain days the wretched woman drank deeply the cup of

gall, as certain memories returned. Now and then there came to her a

poisoned vision of black recollections that rose about her, stifling

her. This usually happened down at the river-bank, while she was

washing, at times of mental abstraction caused by her monotonous and

purely mechanical toil. Then her eyes would fill with tears, which

slowly rolled down her cheeks and fell upon her hands, now reddened by

hard labor and the cold caress of the water. The other washwomen, all

about her, observed her grief, and fell to whispering:

"See how she's crying?"

"Poor thing!"

"Poor? Well--it was her own doing. Fate is just. It gives everybody what

they deserve. Why didn't she look out who she was marrying?"

From time to time away down at the end of the valley, shut in behind an

undulating line of blue hills, a train passed by. Its strident whistle,

enlarged and flung about hither and yon by echoes, broke the silence of

the plain. Some few of the younger washwomen usually sat up on their

heels, then, and followed with their eyes the precipitate on-rushing of

the train. You could behold a dreaming sadness in their eyes, a vision

of far-off, unseen cities. But Rafaela never raised her head to look at

the train. The shrieking whistle tore at her ears with the vibration of

a familiar voice. She kept on washing, while her tear-wet eyes seemed to

be peering at the mysteries of forgetfulness in the passing water.

Despite the great physical and moral decline of the poor woman, she did

not fail to waken thoughts and hopes in a certain man. To her aspired a

fellow named Benjamin, by trade a shoemaker. He was already turning

fifty years, was a widower and had two sons in the army.

This Benjamin's affairs went along only so-so, because not all the

people of the village could afford to wear shoes, and those who could

afford them did not feel any great need of wearing fine or new ones.

Rafaela washed and mended his clothes, and ironed a shirt for him, every

saint's-day. He paid her little, but regularly, for these services; and

gradually friendship grew up between them. This mutual liking, which was

at first impersonal and calm, finally grew in the shoemaker's heart till

it became the fire of love.

"If you were only willing," Señor Benjamin often said to Rafaela, "we

could come to an understanding. You're all alone. So am I. Well, why not

live together?"

She smiled, with that disillusion which comes to a soul that life has

bit by bit ravaged of all its dreams.

"You're crazy to talk that way, Benjamin," she would answer.

"Why?"

"Oh, because."

"Come now, explain that! Why am I crazy?"

Rafaela did not want to annoy the man, because she would thus lose a

customer, and so she gave him an evasive answer:

"Why, I'm already old."

"Not for me!"

"I'm ugly!"

"That's a matter of taste. You suit _me_ to a T."

"Thanks. But, what would people say? And suppose we had any children,

Benjamin! What would they think of us?"

"Oh, there's a thousand ways to cover it all up. You just take a shine

to me, and I'll fix everything else."

Rafaela promised to think it over; and every night when she came home

from work, Benjamin jokingly asked her, from his door:

"Well, neighbor, how about it?"

"I'm still thinking it over," she answered, with a laugh.

"It seems to be pretty hard for you to decide."

"It surely is!"

"Yes, but are you going to get it settled?"

"How do _I_ know, Benjamin? Sometimes I think one thing, and sometimes

another. Time will tell!"

But the soul of Rafaela lay dead. Nothing could revive her illusions.

The shoemaker, after many efforts, had to give her up. And always after

that, when he saw her pass along, he would heave a sigh in an absurd,

romantic manner.

On the first of every month, Rafaela always wrote a four-page letter to

Zureda, containing all the petty details of her quiet, humdrum life. It

was by means of these letters, written on commercial cap, that the

prisoner learned the rapid physical growth of little Manolo. By the time

the boy had reached twelve years he had become rebellious, quarrelsome

and idle. He was still in the pot-hook class, at school. Stone-throwing

was one of his favorite habits. One day he injured another boy of his

age so severely that the constable gathered him in, and nothing but the

fatherly intervention of the priest saved him from a night in the

lock-up.

Rafaela always ended up the paragraphs thus, in which she described the

fierce wildness of the boy:

"I tell you plainly, I can't manage him."

This seemed a confession of weariness, that outlined both a threat and a

prophecy.

The prisoner wrote her, in one of his letters:

"The last jail pardon, that you may have read about in the papers, let

out many of my companions. I had no such luck. But, anyhow, they cut

five years off my time. So there are only six years more between us."

Regularly the letters came and went between Rafaela and the prisoner at

Ceuta. Two years more drew to their close.

But evil fortune had not yet grown weary of stamping its heel on Amadeo

Zureda's honest shoulders.

"Please forgive me, dear Rafaela," the prisoner wrote again, after a

while, "the new sorrow I must cause you. But by the life of our son I

swear I could not avoid the misfortune which most expectedly is going to

prolong our separation, for I don't know how long.

"As you may guess, there are few saints among the rough crowd here, that

are scraped up from all the prisons in Spain. Though I have to live

among them, I don't consider them my equals. For that reason I try to

keep away from them, and have nothing to do with their rough mirth or

noisy quarrels. Well, it happened that the end of last week a

smart-Aleck of a fellow came in, an Andalusian. He had been given twelve

years for killing one man and badly injuring another. As soon as this

fellow saw me, he took me for a boob he could make sport of, and lost no

chance of poking fun at me. I kept quiet, and--so as not to get into any

mix-up with him--turned my back on him.

"Yesterday, at dinner, he tried to pick a quarrel. Some of the other

prisoners laughed and set him on to me.

"'Look here, Amadeo,' said he. 'What are you in for?'

"I answered, looking him square in the eyes:

"'For having killed a man.'

"'And what did you kill him for?' he insisted.

"I said nothing, and then he added something very coarse and ugly that I

won't repeat. It's enough for you to know your name was mixed up in it.

That's why your name was the last word his mouth ever uttered. I drew my

knife--you know that in spite of all the care they take, and all their

searches, we all go armed--and cried:

"'Look out for yourself, now, because I'm going to kill you!'

"Then we fought, and it was a good fight, too, because he was a brave

man. But his courage was of no use to him. He died on the spot.

"Forgive me, dearest Rafaela of my soul, and make our boy forgive me,

too. This makes my situation much worse, because now I shall have

another trial and I don't know what sentence I'll get. I realize it was

very bad of me to kill this man, but if I hadn't done it he would have

killed me, which would have been much worse for all of us."

Several months after, Zureda wrote again:

"I have been having my trial. Luckily all the witnesses testified in my

behalf, and this, added to the good opinion the prison authorities have

of me, has greatly improved my position. The indictment was terrible,

but I'm not worrying much about that. To-morrow I shall know my

sentence."

All the letters of Amadeo Zureda were like this, peaceful and noble,

seemingly dictated by the most resigned stoicism. He never let anything

find its way into them which might remind Rafaela of her fault. In these

pages, filled with a strong, even writing, there was neither reproach,

dejection, nor despairing impatience. They seemed to be the admirable

reflection of an iron will which had been taught by misfortune--the most

excellent mother of all knowledge--to understand the dour secret of

hoping and of waiting.