IV

The tram kept on going and going and whether because of the heat that

could be felt inside it or the slow and monotonous movement of the

vehicle that gives rise to a certain amount of dizziness which then

turns into sleep, what is certain is that I felt my eyelids droop,

leaned to my left-hand side, placing my elbow on the bundle of books,

and closed my eyes. While in this position I continued to see the

row of faces of both sexes in front of me, some bearded, some shaven,

some laughing, some very stiff and serious. Afterwards it seemed

to me that, obeying the contraction of a single muscle, all those

faces winked and grimaced, opening and closing their eyes and their

mouths, and showing me in turn a series of teeth that varied from

whiter than white to yellowish, some as sharp as knives, others

broken and worn. Those eight noses set under sixteen eyes varying

in colour and expression, got bigger or smaller and changed shape;

the mouths opened in a horizontal line producing silent laughter

or stretched forward forming sharp-pointed snouts similar to the

interesting face of a certain distinguished animal which has brought

down on itself the anathema of being unnameable.

Behind those eight faces, whose horrendous traits I have just depicted,

and through the windows of the tram, I could see the street, the houses

and the passers-by, all speeding past as if the tram were travelling

at a vertiginous speed. I at least thought that it went faster than

the trains on our railroads, faster than its French, English and North

American counterparts. It ran as fast as might be imagined when it

came to displacing solid objects.

As this state of lethargy increased, I was able to imagine that houses,

streets and the whole of Madrid were gradually disappearing. For a

moment I thought that the tram was running through oceanic depths:

through the windows could be seen the bodies of enormous cetaceans

and the sticky appendages of a multitude of polyps of various sizes.

Small fish were shaking their slippery tails against the glass and

some of them were looking inside with great and gilded eyes.

Crustaceans of an unfamiliar shape, large molluscs, madrepores, sponges

and a scattering of big and misshapen bivalves which I had never seen

before, swam ceaselessly past. The tram was being pulled by monstrous

swimming creatures, whose oars, fighting with the water, sounded like

the blades of a propeller churning it up with their ceaseless rotation.

This vision started to fade. Then it seemed to me that the tram was

flying through the air, always in the same direction and without being

blown off course by winds. Through the windows only empty space was

visible. Clouds sometimes enveloped us and a sudden downpour drummed

against the upper deck. All at once we came out into pure space flooded

with sunshine, only to go back to the nebulous presence of huge flashes,

now red, now yellow, sometimes opal, sometimes amethyst, which were

being left behind us as we made our way forward. We passed then through

a point in space where shining forms floated in a very fine golden dust:

further on this dust storm, which I took to be produced by the movement

of the wheels grinding the light, was silver, then green like flour made

from emeralds, and finally red like flour made from rubies. The tram

was being dragged by some apocalyptic bird, stronger than a hippogryph

and more daring than a dragon, and the noise of the wheels and the

driving force made me think of the whirring of the great sails of a

windmill, or rather the buzz of a bumblebee the size of an elephant.

We were flying through infinite space without ever arriving anywhere.

In the meantime the earth fell away several leagues below our feet,

and the things of earth--Spain, Madrid, the Salamanca district,

Cascajares, the Countess, the Count, Mudarra, the gallant young man,

all of them together.

I soon fell into a deep sleep and then the tram stopped moving, stopped

flying and the sensation that I felt of travelling in such a tram

disappeared and all that was left was the deep and monotonous bass of

the wheels which never abandons us even in our nightmares, be it in a

train or in the cabin of a steamship. I slept. Oh unhappy countess!

I saw her as clearly as I now see the paper that I'm writing on. I

saw her sat next to a night light, hand on cheek, sad and pensive like

a statue depicting Melancholy. At her feet a lapdog lay curled up that

seemed to me just as sad as his as his interesting mistress.

Then I was able to examine at my leisure the woman I had come to see

as misfortune personified. She was tall and fair with big and

expressive eyes, an aquiline nose that was actually quite prominent,

though not out of proportion to the rest of her face, and set off

by the twin curves of her fine and arched eyebrows. She was casually

groomed and from this, as from her dress, it was possible to surmise

that she did not intend to go out again that night. A night of

marvels truly! I observed with increasing anxiety the beautiful

form I so much wanted to know better and it seemed to me that I could

read her mind behind that noble brow in which the habit of reflexion

had traced scarcely visible lines which would soon become wrinkles.

Suddenly the door to her room opened to let a man in. The Countess

gave a yelp of surprise and got up in a state of great agitation.

"What's this?" she said. "Rafael. You. What barefaced cheek! How

did you get in?"

"Madam," answered the one who had just entered, a young man of noble

bearing. "Weren't you expecting me? I received a letter from you."

"A letter from me!" exclaimed the Countess even more agitated. "I

wrote no such letter. And what reason would I have for writing it?"

"Madam, look," the young man responded, taking out the letter and

showing it to her. "It's in your own handwriting."

"Good God! What devilry is this?" said the lady in despair. "It was

not I who wrote this letter. They're setting a trap for me."

"Madam, calm down. I'm very sorry."

"Yes. I understand everything now. That infamous man. I have a

strong suspicion as to what he had in mind. Leave this instant. But

it's already too late. I can already hear my husband's voice."

Indeed a deafening voice could be heard in the room next door and,

after a short interval, the Count came in the room. He feigned

surprise at seeing the gallant visitor and, subsequently laughing

somewhat affectedly, spoke to him:

"Ah Rafael! You're here. Long time no see! You came to accompany

Antonia on the piano. You'll take tea with us."

The Countess and her spouse exchanged a meaningful glance. The young

man in his perplexity hardly managed to return the Count's greeting.

I saw them entering the living room and servants coming out to meet

them. I saw that the servants were carrying tea things and afterwards

they disappeared, leaving the three main characters alone.

Something terrible was going to happen.

They sat down. The Countess looked mortified. The Count affected a

dazed hilarity like drunkenness and the young man spoke only in

monosyllables. Tea was served and the Count passed to Rafael one of

the cups, not just any cup, but one he'd singled out. The Countess

looked at that cup so fearfully it seemed that her soul had left her

body. They drank in silence ballasting the brew with a tasty assortment

of Huntley and Palmers biscuits and other nibbles appropriate to this

type of supper. Then the Count burst out laughing again with the

outrageous and noisy demonstrativeness that was peculiar to him that

night, and said:

"How bored we all are! You, Rafael, haven't said a word. Antonia,

play something. We haven't heard you play for such a long time. This

piece by Gorschack, for instance, entitled Death. You used to play it

wonderfully. Come on. Sit down at the piano."

The Countess tried to speak, but could not say a word. The Count

looked at her in such a way that the unhappy woman quailed before

the terrible expression in his eyes like a dove hypnotized by a boa

constrictor. She got up to go to the piano and again there the

husband must have said something that terrified her even more,

subjecting her to his devilish dominion. The piano sounded with

several strings struck at once and, running from the low notes to

the high notes, the lady's hands awoke in a second hundreds of

sounds that were lying dormant in among the strings and hammers.

At first the music was a confused mixture of sounds that stunned

rather than pleased, but then that storm blew over and a funereal

and timorous dirge like the Dies irae came out of such disorder.

It seemed to me I heard the sad sound of a choir of Carthusians

accompanied by the hoarse bellow of the bassoons. After could

be heard pitiful sighs like those that we imagine souls exhale,

condemned in purgatory to ceaselessly beg for a pardon that is a

long time in coming.

Then came loud and extended arpeggios and the notes reared up as

if arguing about which of them would could there first. Chords

came together and broke up like the foam on waves which forms and

is then effaced. The harmonies boiled and fluctuated in an endless

heavy swell, fading into silence and then coming back more strongly

in great and hasty eddies. I carried on entranced by the majestic

and impressive music. I could not see the face of the countess,

sat with her back to me, but I imagined it to be in such a state of

bewilderment and fright that I started to think that the piano was

playing itself. The young man was behind her, the count to her

right, leaning on the piano. From time to time she raised her eyes

to look at him, but she must have seen something dreadful in the

eyes of her companion as she went back to lowering hers and kept on

playing. Suddenly the piano stopped sounding and the Countess cried

out.

Just at that moment I felt an extremely strong blow to my shoulder,

shook myself violently and woke up.

V

In my agitated dream I had changed position and had allowed myself

to fall on the venerable English lady who was travelling next to me.

"Aah! You--sleeping--disturb me," she said, making a sour face,

while she pushed away from her my bundle of books which had fallen

onto her knees.

"Madam, it's true. I fell asleep," I replied, embarrassed to see

that all the passengers were laughing at this scene.

"Oh! I tell driver--you disturb me--very shocking," the English

woman added in her incomprehensible gibberish: "Oh! You think my

body is your bed for you to sleep. Oh! Gentleman, you are a

stupid ass."

On saying this, this daughter of Britannia, who already had a ruddy

complexion, blushed red as a tomato. You might have thought that

the blood that had rushed to her cheeks and her nose was flowing

from her incandescent pores. She showed me four sharp and very

white teeth as if she wanted to bite me. I asked of her a thousand

pardons for the discourtesy of falling asleep, picked up my bundle

and reviewed the new faces that there now were in the tram.

Imagine, oh calm and kind reader, when I saw facing me--guess who?

the young man I had just finished dreaming about, Don Rafael in

the flesh. I rubbed my eyes to convince myself that I was not still

asleep and found myself awake, as awake as I am now. He it was and

he was talking to someone else who was travelling with him. I paid

attention and listened as hard as I could:

"But didn't you suspect anything?" the other person said to him.

"Something, yes. But I held my tongue. She looked petrified with

terror. Her husband ordered her to play the piano and she did not

dare to resist. She played, as always, admirably, and, as I listened

to her, I managed to forget the dangerous situation in which we

found ourselves. Despite the efforts she was making to look calm,

a moment came when she was no longer able to pretend any more. Her

arms relaxed and slipped off the keys. She threw her head back and

cried out. Then her husband took out a dagger and, taking a step

towards her, shouted furiously: "Play or I'll kill you this instant."

When I saw this my blood boiled. I wanted to throw myself at that

wretch, but I felt in my body a sensation that I cannot describe to

you. A furnace had lit up in my stomach. Fire was running through

my veins. My lungs were hyperventilating and I fell on the floor

senseless."

"And before that did you not recognize the symptoms of poisoning?"

asked the other. "I noticed a certain feeling of uneasiness and

had a vague suspicion, but nothing more than that. The poison had

been well prepared. It had a delayed effect on me and did not kill

me, though it's left me with a physical impairment for life."

"And after you passed out, what happened?"

Rafael was going to answer and I was hanging on his every word as

if it were a matter of life and death when the tram halted.

"Ah, here we are already at Consejos. Let's get off here," said

Rafael.

What a nuisance! They were getting off and I would not know how

the story ended.

"Sir, sir, a word," I said on seeing them get off. The young man

stopped and looked at me.

"And the Countess? What became of her?" I asked eagerly.

Loud laughter was my only response. The two young men laughed too

and left without saying a word. The only living being to keep her

sphinx-like calm at such a comic scene was the English woman who,

indignant at my outlandish behaviour, turned to the other passengers

saying: "Oh! A lunatic fellow!"