My mother, with her usual sagacity, saw at once that I was preoccupied
and morose, but she made a mistake as to the cause.
“They must have slighted you at Tejo,” she said. “Don’t say it is not
so, for I am sure that they treated you in a shameful manner. If not,
why did you rush off like a frightened hare, without taking leave of
anybody? Come, now, tell your mother all about it.”
Although I vowed and protested that I had been treated with the greatest
kindness, she would not believe it.
“Well, well, keep it to yourself, make a mystery of it; but I’ll find it
out, for everything leaks out. Some of the others will tell me all about
it.”
I had to tell her all the particulars of the wedding; or, rather, she
went ahead of my story, and showed herself acquainted with details in a
way that amazed me. She was posted on points where I was ignorant. It
was characteristic of her quick and sharp wit to master the minor
matters of life, but to remain in ignorance of its deep, eternal laws,
which can be perceived only by superior minds, and which will control
life until its last breath is drawn, and the universe grows cold through
the absence of love.
During the first days of my stay in the village I felt much better. The
singular frenzy of the day of the wedding had subsided through lack of
external stimuli to revive it; so much so that I came to fancy that my
enthusiasm over Carmen, my furious jealousy, the poetic reveries on the
beach, were only tricks of the imagination, which is apt to feign the
existence of profound feelings where there is really only caprice, vague
longings and delusions.
Luis Portal came from Orense to pass a week at my house, and his society
helped to quiet me down. We took such long walks and ate such quantities
of bread and milk that healthy fatigue and country life did their work,
preparing me to listen calmly and even assent to arguments like the
following:
“What is taking place in you,” Luis used to say when we were stretched
out at the foot of a chestnut, where we had divided our lunch, “is a
phenomenon very common among us Spaniards. While we honestly believe
that we are preparing for the future and longing for it, we live
infatuated with the past, and are really the bitterest kind of
traditionalists at bottom, although we call ourselves Republicans. What
charms and attracts you in your Uncle Felipe’s wife is precisely that in
which she is most in opposition to your ideas, your convictions, and
your manner of life as a man of the nineteenth century.
“You say that Señorita Aldao realizes the ideal of a Christian woman.
Nonsense, my boy! Will you kindly tell me what attractiveness we can
find in that ideal if we examine it carefully? The ideal for us ought to
be the woman of the present, or, better, of the future; a woman who
could understand us and share our aspirations. You will say that she
does not exist. Then let us try to manufacture her. She will never exist
if we condemn her before she is born.
“What are the virtues which you attribute to your aunt, and which you
admire so much? In what do they consist? They appear to me negative,
irrational, brutal. Don’t start up in that way,--I said brutal. She has
married a man who is repulsive to her, given herself up to him like an
automaton, and all for what? In order not to sanction by her presence
another person’s sins. Who can be held responsible for anybody’s actions
but his own? That young lady is either demented or a stark fool; and the
friar who countenances her and seconds her,--well, I don’t care to say
what I think of him, because my tongue would run away with me. He
understands better than she does what she is binding herself to, and he
ought to have prevented such a barbarous affair. I tell you that the
little friar,--oh, well, a friar will be a friar; but we, who undertake
to bring about social changes, must differentiate ourselves from him to
some extent.
“A woman such as our modern society needs would go out to service, would
take in sewing, or scrub floors, if she was not happy in her father’s
house, if her self-respect was wounded, but she would never give up her
liberty, her heart, and her person, to such a husband. You have caught
the infection of Christianity. You must get rid of it. A perfect
Christian woman! And why is it that you are charmed by a perfect
Christian woman? Are you, perchance, a perfect Christian man? Do you
aspire to be one? Or do you believe that the destined progress of
society depends upon the wife being a Christian and the husband a
rationalist?
“Salustio, wake up, for you are dreaming. Are you really going to fall
in love with a woman, because her ideas are contrary to yours in almost
every respect? Well, suppose she were single, and you should marry her,
and that she should keep burning the torch of faith,--and--well--I would
not give a fig for it all. Leave her to your uncle, she is just the
thing for him. They’ll make a fine couple. But for you! My boy, cure
yourself of romanticism and Christianity. That does not mean that you
should not make love to your auntie; but do it in a human way, without
any high tragedy business. If you like her, go on! That is, so long as
you are careful to avoid family dramas. Leave the dramas for the Teatro
Real; even there the greater part of them are senseless. Well, you
understand me, no dramas. But if you dare to tell me any more tales
about Christian women and Jewish men, I’ll give you a dose of bromide.
And, above all things, grind away at your studies. I shall not waste any
time next year, even if Venus herself should come and be sweet on me.”
Portal’s sensible remarks did not fail to influence me greatly. At least
they made me ponder on the problem of my wild enthusiasm. It was true
that my aunt’s ideas and feelings were radically opposed to mine; I did
not believe at all in what she venerated as dogma; her ideas of morality
differed from mine; the word duty had a meaning for her different from
the one I put upon it; but, nevertheless, that very difference of ideals
attracted me toward her, in the same manner that a white man is
sometimes charmed by the olive hue of a mulatto, or a passionate gypsy
woman by the golden hair of an Englishman.
Was Portal right in saying that we knew no woman suited to us, and that
we ought to search for one, to fashion her in our own image, so that she
might comprehend us, and her brain work in unison with ours? Or, on the
contrary, was a piquant unlikeness of souls a greater attraction, and
the having in one’s own soul hidden chambers, like Blue Beard’s, where a
wife would never be able to enter? Why did I exalt that woman, seeing in
her a perfect type of womanhood? Why did her self-sacrifice, which would
have appeared so absurd in me, seem so sublime in her?
“Luis is right on one subject,” I definitely decided; “we must devote
our minds to our books; a drama in one’s own life is an enemy of study.”
In fact, I took up my books in order to take advantage of the leisure of
vacation time to do a little reviewing, and when I tried to concentrate
my mind on inflexible mathematics, a fearful battle raged in my brain,
which I used to call, in my private dialect, the war between straight
lines and curved. The straight lines were the equations, the
polynomials, the theorems, the problems connected with the cutting of
angles, and other such demoniacal puzzles; while the curved lines stood
for amorous reveries, hatred of Jews, and all the troublesome
ebullitions of my youthful fancy. At first the curved lines had the best
of it, but the superior tactics and precision of the straight lines
finally routed that undisciplined army, which, in the utmost confusion,
retreated toward the heart, its last refuge.
The vacation was drawing to a close, when we had an unexpected visitor.
The irrepressible Serafín made his appearance without any signs of
bitterness or ill-will, lazy and good-natured as a little dog, and took
up his abode at Ullosa. I could not recollect that I had ever given him
any invitation, and my mother was sure that she had not. We made the
best of the situation, and from the first day my mother devoted him to
trimming out the vines on the arbors, picking fruit, and feeding the
chickens--tasks which he performed with the greatest pleasure. When we
talked by ourselves, instead of displaying the slightest resentment, he
embraced me warmly.
“Don’t you know?” he asked, affectionately; “as soon as you left, I
untied myself. If they had caught me in such a fix, tied up, a nice time
we should have had! What a joke! It was not right to watch them; but it
was jolly fun. The wine was to blame for it all. The married couple went
off to Pontevedra that very afternoon. Now they are showing themselves
off there. The Saint complimented them by a grand dinner at _Naranjal_;
they served up fried brains of taxpayers and pickled client’s leg. They
had nougat for desert--as your uncle’s house is already rented for the
post-office. Hey? He, he, he! Señor Aldao has obtained some cross or
other, and is now called ‘Your Excellency.’ And you don’t know the best
of it. Haven’t you heard about the irrision,--I mean procession,--in
honor of the Virgin? I was amazed that fire from heaven did not fall
upon it, as was said--_Pluit super Sodomam et Gomorrham sulphur et ignem
a domino de cœlo_. If you could have seen that masquerade! There was
Don Vicente carrying the standard; Pimentel, very stuck up, with his
white cravat; your uncle carrying a lighted taper, with a face which
looked like mortal sin; behind him all the political hangers-on,
grasping tapers--they who never thought they would do such a thing! Then
came the fellows with leggins, the secretaries to the Common Council,
with white ruffles round their knees; all the mayors, and all the
judges, and all the registrars, and all the supernumeraries. Oh, why
didn’t you go to Pontevedra that day? We wont have another such in
twenty years to come. Even the newspaper men and the masons carried
tapers. I assure you it is true. And afterward _El Teucrense_ called the
procession a festival. What is a festival? Like a saturnalia, I
presume.”
Afterward, lowering his voice, he added:
“There was a bishop there also, gaping away, and not out of devotion to
the Virgin, either, but for the sake of the great saint with the fat
offices. But don’t feel shocked at that. Nestorius was bishop of
Constantinople. And who promoted the schism of that big hog of a king of
England but another pig of a heretical bishop, who was called _Crémor or
Cremer_! Don’t talk to me about bishops. The Church will have to be
reformed by the Pope and us clergy alone--no, I mean the clergy’s
apprentices and a few laymen with grievances--no matter what the
Encyclical, _cum multa_, says.”
I assured him that I did not know what that Encyclical said, and then
asked him, as though by chance, after Candidiña.
“A nice girl she is! He, he, he! She is there all alone with the old
man, now. She’ll drive him distracted.”
He also spoke of Father Moreno, and I learned that the Moorish friar
intended to spend a few days at Ullosa as soon as he had finished taking
his sea-baths.
In fact, the Father arrived a few days later, covered with dust from his
long ride in the diligence. My mother, who was very fond of him,
received him quite coldly at first; she could not forgive him for having
officiated at the marriage. But I overwhelmed him with polite
attentions. I should have liked to be able to say to Aben Jusuf:
“My delirium has passed away. The sentimental fever has abated. If you
only knew, Father, how well I feel now. Just like a person who uses an
anæsthetic to cure his neuralgia, and does cure it. My neuralgia, or
lover’s toothache, no longer exists. It seems impossible that I am the
same one who almost broke his neck falling off a tree, lowered his
dignity by playing the spy on a certain wedding night, wanted to throw
himself into the sea, and begged a novitiate’s habit of you. Here you
see a well-behaved young man, a student of engineering, and the son of
Benigna Unceta, who, as you know, is a very practical lady. I am now
sound and whole.”
If not exactly this, it was something very similar that I said to him in
the course of a ramble over the mountains. I recollect that he seemed
well pleased, and answered as follows:
“I am indeed glad to hear it, but don’t be too sure. These heart fevers
do not go on as they begin; but the Lord help us, if you get a relapse.
And it’s our fault if we have a relapse, because we go near the fire. In
that lottery, they give prizes to the nearest numbers. Don’t you get
near. Keep at a respectful distance. Establish a sanitary cordon. If
you do not do so, I shall not consider you a man of honor.”
_Mutatis mutandis_, so Father Moreno expressed his opinions. After her
momentary annoyance, my mother, whose heart is as good as gold and who
is very hospitable, showered attentions on the Father, and insisted on
feeding him at all hours of the day, until finally the friar, with a
comical air, rose in revolt:
“No more chicken, not even if you cut me in pieces! Not a morsel more!
What a woman! Hard-hearted creature, do you want me to burst on the
spot? You may wear as big a bustle as you choose, madam, but I must
control the bulging of my own stomach.”
But her exaggerated gastronomical entertainment of the friar did not
last long, for he went off to his monastery after the two days, leaving
a great void behind him. His vacation was over, and the leave of absence
granted by his Superior in order that he might take sea-baths and
recruit his health; so the Moor in a friar’s garb meekly wended his way
back to his gloomy retreat in Compostela, where the walls were covered
with dampness, and a green moisture was visible on the window-sills and
the cracks of the masonry. In spite of the hearty manner in which he
assured me that he was willing to fulfill his obligations, I could see
that that Spaniard, who was half Saracen, so fond of the warmth of
Africa, must suffer keenly both in mind and body on being banished to
such a damp and dreary region.
I saw him march away to his exile, recalling with amazement that I had
envied him his garb, and even the vows which bound him.
I surely must have been sick with a sort of _psycalgia_, or moral
neurosis, this summer, and now that I am convalescent I perceive it.
During the few days before my return to Madrid, as we had no guests or
particular amusements, I buried myself in the reading of two or three
interesting books, works on philosophy, among them Kant’s “Critique of
Pure Reason.” Exempt as it is, in my judgment, from all flow of mere
sentiment and misleading hallucinations, I read it with the purest
delight; my mind, already disciplined by the study of mathematics,
fairly absorbing the teaching of the philosopher. I felt the remotest
cells of my brain penetrated, in gentle firmness, by those truths of
criticism, which, far from leading us to skeptical negations, fill us
with a serene conviction of the uselessness of our endeavors to become
acquainted with the external world, and shut us up in the beneficent
selfishness of the study of our own faculties.
When, after reading Kant, I would roam through the meadows, the groves,
the modest belongings of our patrimonial estate, and the peace of
twilight would sink into my spirit, I would find myself feeling happy;
completely cured of my folly; shut up to the straight line. “Understand,
and you will be free,” I repeated to myself, with youthful pride.