I
"Your friends are waiting for you at the Club. They saw you for a moment
only, this morning; they'll be wanting to hear all your stories about
life in Madrid."
Doña Bernarda fixed upon the young deputy a pair of deep, scrutinizing,
severely maternal eyes that recalled to Rafael all the roguish anxieties
of his childhood.
"Are you going directly to the Club?..." she added. "Andrés will be
starting too, right away."
Rafael, in reply, wished a blunt "good-afternoon" to his mother and don
Andrés, who were still at table sipping their coffee, and strode out of
the dining-room.
Finding himself on the broad, red-marble staircase in the silence of
that ancient mansion, of such princely magnificence, he experienced the
sudden sense of comfort and wellbeing that a traveler feels on plunging
into a bath after a tedious journey.
Ever since he had arrived, with the noisy reception at the station, the
hurrahs, the deafening music, handshakes here, crowding there, the
pushing and elbowing of more than a thousand people who had thronged
the streets of Alcira to get a close look at him, this was the first
moment he had found himself alone, his own master, able to do exactly as
he pleased, without needing to smile automatically in all directions and
welcome with demonstrations of affection persons whose faces he could
scarcely recall.
What a deep breath of relief he drew as he went down the deserted
staircase, which echoed his every footstep! How large and beautiful the
_patio_ was! How broad and lustrous the leaves of the plantains
flourishing in their green boxes! There he had spent the best years of
his childhood. The little boys who in those days used to be hiding
behind the wide portal, waiting for a chance to play with the son of the
powerful don Ramón Brull, were now the grown men, the sinewy orchard
workers, who had been parading from the station to his house, waving
their arms, and shouting _vivas_ for their deputy--Alcira's "favorite
son."
This contrast between the past and present flattered Rafael's conceit,
though, in the background of his thoughts, the suspicion lurked that his
mother had been not a little instrumental in the preparation of his
noisy reception, not to mention don Andrés, and numerous other friends,
ever loyal to anyone connected with the greatness of the Brulls,
_caciques_--political bosses--and leading citizens of the district.
To enjoy these recollections of childhood and the pleasure of finding
himself once more at home, after several months in Madrid, he stood for
some time motionless in the _patio_, looking up at the balconies of the
first story, then at the attic windows--from which in mischievous years
gone by he had many a time withdrawn his head at the sound of his
mother's scolding voice--and lastly, at the veil of luminous blue
above--a patch of sky drenched in that Spanish sunlight which ripens the
oranges to clusters of flaming gold.
He thought he could still see his father--the imposing, solemn don
Ramón--sauntering about the _patio_, his hands behind his back,
answering in a few impressive words the questions flung at him by his
party adherents, who followed him about with idolatrous eyes. If the old
man could only have come back to life that morning to see how his son
had been acclaimed by the entire city!...
A barely perceptible sound like the buzzing of two flies broke the deep
silence of the mansion. The deputy looked toward the only balcony window
that was open, though but slightly. His mother and don Andrés were still
talking in the dining-room--and of him, as usual, without a doubt! And,
lest they should call him, and suddenly deprive him of his keen
enjoyment at being alone, he left the _patio_ and went out into the
street.
It was only the month of March; but at two in the afternoon the air was
almost uncomfortably hot. Accustomed to the cold wind of Madrid and to
the winter rains, Rafael inhaled, with a sense of voluptuous pleasure,
the warm breeze that wafted the perfume of the blossoming orchards
through the narrow lanes of the ancient town.
Once, years before, he had been in Italy on a Catholic pilgrimage,
entrusted by his mother to the care of a priest from Valencia, who would
not think of returning to Spain without paying a visit to don Carlos. A
memory of a Venetian _calle_ now came back to Rafael's mind as he
traversed the streets of old Alcira--shadowy, cramped, sunk deep as
wells between rows of high houses. With all the economy of a city built
on an island, Alcira rears its edifices higher and higher as its
population grows, leaving just enough space free for the bare needs of
traffic.
The streets were deserted. The noisy, orchard workers who had welcomed
Rafael had gone back to the fields again. All the idlers had fled to the
cafés, and as the deputy walked smartly by in front of these, warm waves
of air came out upon him through the windows, with the clatter of poker
chips, the noise of billiard balls, and the uproar of heated argument.
Rafael reached the Suburban Bridge, one of the two means of egress from
the Old City. The Júcar was combing its muddy, reddish waters on the
piles of the ancient structure. A number of row-boats, made fast to the
houses on the shore, were tugging at their moorings. Rafael recognized
among them the fine craft that he had once used for lonely trips on the
river. It lay there quite forgotten, gradually shedding its coat of
white paint out in the weather.
Then he looked at the bridge itself; the Gothic-arched gate, a relic of
the old fortifications; the battlements of yellowish, chipped rock,
which looked as if all the rats of the river had come at night to nibble
at them; then two niches with a collection of mutilated, dust-laden
images--San Bernardo, patron Saint of Alcira, and his estimable sisters.
Dear old San Bernardo, _alias_ Prince Hamete, son of the Moorish king
of Carlet, converted to Christ by the mystic poesy of the Christian
cult,--and still wearing in his mangled forehead the nail of martyrdom!
As Rafael walked past the rude, disfigured statue he thought of all the
stories his mother, an uncompromising clerical and a woman of credulous
faith, had told him of the patron of Alcira, particularly the legend of
the enmity and struggle between San Vicente and San Bernardo, an
ingenuous fancy of popular superstition.
Saint Vincent, who was an eloquent preacher arrived at Alcira on one of
his tours, and stopped at a blacksmith's shop near the bridge to get his
donkey shod. When the work was done the horseshoer asked for the usual
price for his labor; but San Vicente, accustomed to living on the bounty
of the faithful, waxed indignant, and looking at the Júcar, exclaimed,
vindictively:
"Some day folks will say: 'This is where Alcira used to be'."
"Not while Bernardo is here!" the statue of San Bernardo remarked from
its pedestal.
And there the statue of the saint still stood, like an eternal sentinel,
watching over the Júcar to exorcise the curse of the rancorous Saint
Vincent! To be sure the river would rise and overflow its banks every
year, reaching to the very feet of San Bernardo sometimes, and coming
within an ace of pulling the wily saint down from his perch. It is also
true that every five or six years the flood would shake houses loose
from their foundations, destroy good farm land, drown people, and commit
other horrible depredations--all in obedience to the curse of Valencia's
patron; but the saint of Alcira was the better man of the two for all
of that! And, if you didn't believe it, there the city was, still
planted firmly on its feet and quite unscathed, except for a scratch
here and there from times when the rains were exceptionally heavy and
the waters came down from Cuenca in a great roaring torrent!
With a smile and a nod to the powerful saint, as to an old friend of
childhood, Rafael crossed the bridge and entered the _arrabal_, the "New
City," ample, roomy, unobstructed, as if the close-packed houses of the
island, to get elbow-room and a breath of air, had stampeded in a flock
to the other bank of the river, scattering hither and thither in the
hilarious disorder of children let loose from school.
The deputy paused at the head of the street on which his club was
located. Even from there he could hear the talking and laughing of the
many members, who had gathered in much greater number than usual because
of his arrival. What would he be in for down there? A speech, probably!
A speech on local politics! Or, if not a speech, idle talk about the
orange crop, or cock-fighting. He would be expected to tell them what
kind of a man the Premier was--and then spend the afternoon analyzing
the character of every minister! Then don Andrés would be there, that
boresome Mentor who, at the instance of Rafael's mother, would never let
him out of sight for a moment. Bah! The Club could wait! He would have
plenty of time later in the day to stifle in that smoke-filled parlor
where, the moment he showed his face, everybody would be upon him and
pester the life out of him with questions and wire-pulling!
And more and more yielding to the lure of the southern sunshine and to
those perfumes of May floating about him in wintertime, he turned off
into a lane that led to the fields.
As he emerged from the ancient Ghetto and found himself in the open
country, he drew a deep breath, as if to imprison in his lungs all the
life, bloom and color of his native soil.
The orange orchards lined both banks of the stream with straight rows of
green, round tree-tops. The sun glistened off the varnished leaves; the
wheels of irrigating machines sounded from the distance like humming
insects. The moisture rising from the canals, joined the clouds from the
chimneys of the motors, to form a thin veil of mist over the
countryside, that gave a pearly transparency to the golden light of the
afternoon.
To one side rose the hill of San Salvador, its crest topped with the
Hermitage, and the pines, the cypresses, and the prickly pears around
that rough testimonial of popular piety. The sanctuary seemed to be
talking to him like an indiscreet friend, betraying the real motive that
had caused him to evade his appointment with his political friends and
disobey his mother into the bargain.
Something more than the beauty of the fields had enticed him from the
city. When the rays of the rising sun had awakened him that morning on
the train, the first thing he had seen, before opening his eyes even,
was an orange orchard, the bank of the Júcar, and a house painted
blue,--the very one that was now in sight away off there, among the
round tree-tops along the river.
How many times in past months his thoughts had lingered on the memory of
that same scene!
Afternoons, in the Congress, while the Premier on the Blue Bench would
be answering the interpellations of the Opposition in sharp incisive
tones, Rafael's brain would begin to doze, reduced to jelly, as it were,
by the incessant hammering of words, words, words! Before his closed
eyes a dark veil would begin to unroll as if the moist, cellar-like
gloom in which the Chamber is always plunged, had thickened suddenly,
and against this curtain, like a cinema dream, rows of orange-trees
would come into view, and a blue house with open windows; and pouring
through the windows a stream of notes from a soft voice, ever so sweet,
singing _lieder_ and ballads as an accompaniment to the hard, sonorous
paragraphs snapping from the Premier's teeth. Then applause and
disorder! The moment for voting had arrived, and the fading outlines of
the Blue House still hovering before his dreamy eyes, the member for
Alcira would ask his neighbor:
"How do we vote? Yes or no?"
The same it was at night at the Opera, where music served only to remind
him of a familiar voice winding like a thread of gold out across the
orchards through the orange trees; and the same again, after dinner with
his colleagues on committees, when the deputies, their cigars tilted
cockily upwards between their lips, and with all the voluptuous gaiety
inspired by good digestions, would troop off to see the night out in
some trustworthy house of assignation where their dignity as
representatives of the country would not be compromised!
Now that blue house was actually before his eyes! And he was hurrying
toward it,--not without some hesitation; a vague uneasiness he could not
explain. His heart was in his mouth, it seemed, and he found it hard to
breathe.
Orchard workers came along the road, occasionally, stepping aside to
make room for the famous man, though he answered their greeting
absent-mindedly. What a nuisance! They would all be sure to tell where
they had seen him! His mother would know all about it within half an
hour! And, that evening, a scene in the dining-room! As Rafael walked on
toward the Blue House, he thought bitterly of his situation. Why was he
going there anyhow? Why insist on living in a stew all the time? He had
had two or three short but violent scenes with his mother a few months
before. What a fury that stern, pious, and puritanic woman became when
she found out that her son had been calling down at the Blue House and
was on friendly terms with a strange lady, an outsider, whom the
respectable folk of the city would have nothing to do with, and of whom
not a good word was ever heard except from the men at the Club, when
they were sure their wives were not in hearing distance!
Tempestuous scenes they had been! He was running for Congress at the
time. Was he trying--she wanted to know--to dishonor the family and
compromise his political future? Was that what his poor father had lived
for--a life of sacrifice and struggle, of service to "the Party," which,
many a time, had meant shouldering a gun? And a loose woman was to be
allowed to ruin the House of Brull, which for thirty years had been
putting every cent it owned into politics, for the benefit of My Lords
up in Madrid! And just when a Brull was about to reap the reward of so
many sacrifices at last, and become a deputy--the means perhaps of
clearing off the property, which was lousy with attachments and
mortgages!...
Rafael had been no match for that energetic mother, the soul of "the
Party." Meekly he had promised never to return to the Blue House, never
to call again on that "loose woman"--doña Bernarda actually hissed as
she said the word.
However, the upshot of it all had been that Rafael simply discovered how
weak he was. Despite his promise, he returned to the Blue House often,
but by round-about ways and over long detours, skulking from cover to
cover, as he had done in childhood days when stealing oranges from the
orchards. There he was, a man whose name was on the lips of the whole
county, and who at any moment might be invested with authority from the
people, thus realizing the life-long dream of his father! But the sight
of a woman in the fields, a child, a beggar, would make him blanch with
terror! And that was not the worst of it! Whenever he entered the Blue
House now he had to pretend he came openly, without any fear whatever.
And so things had gone on down to the very eve of his departure for
Madrid.
As Rafael reached this point in his reminiscences, he asked himself what
hope had led him to disobey his mother and brook her truly formidable
wrath.
In that blue house he had found only frank, disinterested friendship,--a
somewhat ironic comradeship, the condescending tolerance of a person
compelled by solitude to choose as her comrade the least repulsive among
a host of inferiors. Alas! How clearly he remembered and could again
foresee the sceptical, cold smile with which his words were always
received, though he was sure he had crammed them with burning passion!
What a laugh she had given,--as insolent and as cutting as a lash,--the
day he had dared to declare his love!
"Now the soft-pedal on slush, eh, Rafaelito?... If you want us to go on
being friends, all right, but it's on condition you treat me as a man.
Comrades, eh, and nothing more."
And with a look at him through those green, luminous, devilish eyes of
hers, she had taken her seat at the piano and begun one of her divine
songs, as if she thought the magic of her art might raise a barrier
between them.
On another occasion, she was irritable rather; Rafael's appealing eyes,
his words of amorous adoration, seemed to provoke her, and she had said
with brutal frankness:
"Don't waste your breath, please! I am through with love. I know men too
well! But even if anyone were to upset me again, it would not be you,
Rafaelito dear."
And yet he had persisted, insensible to the irony and the scorn of this
terrible _amigo_ in skirts, and indifferent as well to the conflicts
that his blind passion might provoke at home if his mother knew.
He tried to free himself from his infatuation, but unsuccessfully. With
that in view he fixed his attention on the woman's past; it was said
that despite her beauty, her aristrocratic manners, the brilliancy of
mind with which she had dazzled him--a poor country boy--she was only an
adventuress who had made her way over half the globe from one pair of
arms to another. Well, in that case, it would be a great exploit to win
a woman whom princes and celebrated men had loved! But since that was
impossible, why go on, why continue endangering his career and having
trouble with his mother all the time?
To forget her, he stressed, before his own mind, words and attitudes of
hers that might be judged defects; and he would taste the joy of duty
well done when, after such gymnastics of the will, he could think of her
without great emotion.
At the beginning of his life in Madrid he imagined he had recovered. New
surroundings; continuous and petty satisfactions to vanity; the
kow-towing of doorkeepers in Congress; the flattery of visitors from
here, there and everywhere who came with requests for passes to admit
them to the galleries; the sense of being treated as a comrade by
celebrities, whose names his father had always mentioned with bated
breath; the "honorable" always written before his name; all Alcira
speaking to him with affectionate familiarity; this rubbing elbows, on
the benches of the conservative majority, with a battalion of dukes,
counts and marquises--young men who had become deputies to round out the
distinction conferred by beautiful sweethearts or winning
thoroughbreds,--all this had intoxicated him, filled his mind
completely, crowding out all other thoughts, and persuading him that he
had been completely cured.
But as he grew familiar with his new life, and the novelty of all this
adulation wore off, tenacious recollections rose again in his memory. At
night, when sleep relaxed the will to forget, which his vigilance kept
at painful tension, that blue house, the green, diabolical eyes of its
principal denizen, that pair of fresh lips with their ironic smile that
seemed to quiver between two rows of gleaming white teeth, would become
the inevitable center of all his dreams.
Why resist any longer? He could think of her as much as he
pleased--that, at least, his mother would never learn. And he gave
himself up to the imagination of love, where distance lent an ever
stronger enchantment to that woman.
He felt a vehement longing to return to his city. Absence seemed to do
away with all the obstacles at home. His mother was not so formidable as
he had thought. Who could tell whether, when he went back--changed as he
felt himself to be by his new experiences--it would not be easier to
continue the old relations? After so much isolation and solitude she
might receive him in more cordial fashion!
The Cortes were about to adjourn, so, in obedience to repeated urging
from his fellow-partisans, and from doña Bernarda, to _do
something_--anything at all--to show interest in the home town--he took
the floor one afternoon at the opening of the session, when only the
president, the sergeant-at-arms, and a few reporters asleep in the
press-gallery, were present, and, with his lunch rising in his throat
from emotion, asked the Minister of Internal Affairs to show a little
more despatch in the matter of flood protection at Alcira--a bill still
in its in-fancy, though it had been pending some seventy years.
After this he was free to return with the halo of a "business-like"
deputy shining about his head--"a zealous defender of the region's
interests," the local weekly and party organ called him. And that
morning, as he stepped off the train, the deputy, deaf to the Royal
March and to the _vivas_, stood up on tiptoe, trying to descry through
the waving banners the Blue House nestling in the distance among the
orange-trees.
As he approached the place that afternoon he was almost sick with
nervousness and emotion. For one last time he thought of his mother, so
intent upon maintaining her prestige and so fearful of hostile gossip;
of the demagogues who had thronged the doors of the cafes that morning,
making fun of the demonstration in his honor; but all his scruples
vanished at sight of the hedge of tall rose-bays and prickly hawthorns
and of the two blue pillars supporting a barrier of green wooden bars.
Resolutely he pushed the gate open, and entered the garden.
Orange-trees stretched in rows along broad straight walks of red earth.
On either side of the approach to the house was a tangle of tall
rose-bushes on which the first buds, heralds of an early spring, were
already beginning to appear.
Above the chattering of the sparrows and the rustle of the wind in the
trees, Rafael could hear the sound of a piano--the keys barely touched
by the player's fingers--and a soft, timid voice, as if the song were
meant for the singer alone.
It was she. Rafael knew the music: a _Lied_ by Schubert--the favorite
composer of the day; a master "whose best work was still unknown," as
she said in the cant she had learned from the critics, alluding to the
fact that only the least subtle of the melancholy composer's works had
thus far been popularized.
The young man advanced slowly, cautiously, as if afraid lest the sound
of his footsteps break in upon that melody which seemed to be rocking
the garden lovingly to sleep in the afternoon's golden sunlight.
He reached the open space in front of the house and once more found
there the same murmuring palms, the same rubblework benches with seats
and backs of flowered tile that he knew so well. There, in fact, she had
so often laughed at his feverish protestations.
The door was closed; but through a half-opened window he could see a
patch of silk; a woman's back, bending slightly forward over the music.
As Rafael came up a dog began to bark at the end of the garden. Some
hens that had been scratching about in sand of the drive, scampered off
cackling with fright. The music stopped. A chair scraped as it was
pushed back. The lady was rising to her feet.
At the balcony a flowing gown of blue appeared; but all that Rafael saw
was a pair of eyes--green eyes, that seemed to fill the entire window
with a flood of light.
"Beppa! Beppina!" cried a firm, a warm, a sonorous, soprano voice.
"_Apri la porta_. Open the door."
And with a slight inclination of her splendid head of thick auburn hair
that seemed to crown her with a helmet of old gold, she smiled to him
with a friendly, somewhat mocking, intimacy:
"Welcome, Rafaelito. I don't know why, but I was expecting you this
afternoon. We have heard all about your triumphs; the music and the
tumult reached even to our desert. My congratulations to the Honorable
don Rafael Brull. Come right in, I _su señoría_."