In a side street of the busiest quarter of Buenos Ayres, there stood
a house that belonged to the Gunderam family. The parents of Gottlieb
Gunderam had bought it when they came to the Argentine in the middle
of the nineteenth century. In those days its value had been small,
but the development of the city had made it a considerable property.
Gottfried Gunderam received tempting offers for it, not only from
private dealers, but from the municipality. The rickety house was to be
torn down, and to be replaced by a modern apartment house.
But Gottfried Gunderam turned a deaf ear to all offers. “The house in
which my mother died,” he declared, “shall not be sold to strangers so
long as the breath is in my body.”
This determination did not arise so much from filial piety, as from a
superstition that was powerful enough to silence even his greed. He
feared that his mother would arise from her grave and avenge herself
on him, if he permitted the family’s ancestral home to be sold and
destroyed. Wealth, good harvests, a great age, and general well-being
were, in his opinion, dependent on his action in this matter. He would
not even allow strangers to enter the house.
His sons and kinsmen mockingly called it the Escurial. Gottfried
Gunderam took no notice of their jeers, but he himself had, gradually
and quite seriously, slipped into the habit of calling the house the
Escurial.
One day, long before his voyage to Germany, Stephen had cleverly
taken advantage of his father in an hour when the old man was tipsy
and merry, and had extorted a promise that the Escurial was to be his
upon his marriage. When he came home with Letitia he counted upon the
fulfilment of this promise. He intended to establish himself as a
lawyer in Buenos Ayres, and restore the neglected house.
He reminded his father of the compact. The old man denied it bluntly.
He winked gravely. “Can you show me any record--black on white? Well,
then, what do you want? A fine lawyer you are to think that you can
enforce an agreement of which there is no record!”
Stephen did not reply. But from time to time--coldly, methodically,
calmly--he reminded the old man of his promise.
The old man said: “The woman you have married is not to my taste. She
doesn’t fit into our life. She reads and reads. It’s sickening. She’s
a milk-faced doll without sap. Let her be content with what she has. I
shan’t be such a fool as to plunge into expenditures on your account.
It would cost a pretty penny to make the Escurial habitable. And I have
no cash. Absolutely none.”
Stephen estimated the available capital of his father as amounting to
between four and five millions. “You owe me my patrimony,” he answered.
“I owe you a damned good thrashing!” the old man replied grimly.
“Is that your last word?”
The old man answered: “Far from it. I won’t speak my last word for a
dozen years. But I like peace at home, and so I’ll make a bargain with
you. Whenever your wife gives birth to a man-child, you shall have the
Escurial, and fifty thousand pesos to boot.”
“Give me the promise in writing! Black on white counts--as you yourself
said.”
The old man laughed a dry laugh. “Good!” he cried, and winked with both
eyes. “You’re improving. Glad to see that the money spent on your legal
studies wasn’t quite wasted.” With a sort of glee he sat down at his
desk, and made out the required document.
A few weeks later Stephen said to Letitia: “Let us drive to the city.
I want to show you the Escurial.”
The only living creature in that house was a mulatto woman ninety years
old. To rouse her one had to throw stones against the wooden shutters.
Then she appeared, bent almost double, half-blind, clothed in rags, a
yellow growth on her forehead.
The street, which had been laid out a century before, was a yard deeper
than the more recent ones; and Stephen and Letitia had to use a short
ladder to reach the door of the house. Within everything was mildewed
and rotten, the furniture and the floors. In the corners the spiders’
webs were like clouds, and fat hairy spiders sat in them peacefully.
The wall-paper was in rags, the window-panes were broken, and the
fire-places had caved in.
But in the room in which the mother of Gunderam had died, there stood a
beautiful inlaid table, an antique piece from a convent of Siena. The
mosaic showed two angels inclining palm-branches toward each other,
and between the two sat an eagle. Upon the table lay the dead woman’s
jewels. Brooches and chains, rings and ear-rings and bracelets, had
lain here dust-covered for many, many years. The reputation of the old
house as being haunted had protected them more effectually than barred
windows.
Letitia was frightened, and thought: “Am I to live here where ghosts
may appear at night to don their old splendour?”
But when Stephen explained his plans for rebuilding and redecorating,
she recovered her gaiety, and her imagination transformed these decayed
rooms into inviting chambers and dainty boudoirs, cool halls with tall
windows and airy, carpeted stairs.
“It depends quite simply on you whether we can have a happy and
beautiful home very soon,” Stephen declared. “I’m doing my share. I
wish I could say the same of you.”
Letitia looked away. She knew the condition which old Gunderam had
made.
Again and again she had to disappoint Stephen. The Escurial lay in its
deathlike sleep, and her husband’s face grew more and more sombre. He
sent her to church to pray; he strewed her bed with ground wall-nuts;
he made her drink a powder of bones dissolved in wine. He sent for an
old crone who was gifted in magic, and Letitia had to stand naked,
surrounded by seven tapers, and let the woman murmur over her body.
And she went to church and prayed, although she had no faith in her
praying and felt no devotion and knew nothing of God. Yet she shuddered
at the murmurs of the Italian witch, although when it was all over, she
laughed and made light of the whole thing.
In spirit she conceived the image of the child which her body denied
her. The image was of uncertain sex, but of flawless loveliness. It had
the soft eyes of a deer, the features of one of Raphael’s angels, and
the exquisite soul of an ode by Hölderlin. It was destined to great
things, and the dizzying curve of its fortune knew no decline. The
thought of this dream child filled her with vaguely beautiful emotions,
and she was amazed at Stephen’s anger and growing impatience. She was
amazed and was conscious of no guilt.
Stephen’s mother, who was known as Doña Barbara to every one, said to
her son: “I bore your father eight living creatures. Three are dead.
Four are strong men. We need not even count your sister Esmeralda. Why
is this woman barren? Chastise her, my son, beat her!”
Stephen gritted his teeth, and took up his ox-hide whip.