Bienvenidos a Ahora de Cuentos. En este video, les traemos *Incesto: novela original* de Eduardo Zamacois, una obra que nos transporta al interior de las pasiones humanas más oscuras. Este relato, cargado de tensión emocional, explora los límites de los sentimientos humanos y las relaciones familiares, donde los secretos y la obsesión se entrelazan de manera inquietante. 📚
### 📝 Resumen de la historia:
*Incesto: novela original* es una obra literaria que profundiza en los pensamientos y emociones de sus personajes, quienes, atrapados en un mundo de obsesión, se enfrentan a dilemas morales y afectivos desgarradores. La historia nos presenta a Mercedes y su familia, cuyas vidas se ven alteradas por una serie de eventos inesperados, donde la obsesión por los libros y las relaciones prohibidas juegan un papel central. 🖤
Este relato de Zamacois explora temas universales como la obsesión, el amor prohibido y las tensiones familiares que nos mantienen al borde de la intriga hasta el final. Su estilo único y su capacidad para describir los matices más complejos de las emociones humanas hacen de este cuento una obra digna de ser leída y reflexionada.
### 📍 ¿Por qué debes escuchar esta historia?
– Una obra clásica de la literatura española, imprescindible para los amantes de los relatos intensos y emocionales.
– La intrincada psicología de los personajes te mantendrá cautivado hasta el último minuto.
– Una historia sobre la obsesión y las pasiones humanas que sigue siendo relevante hoy en día.
Si te gustan las narraciones profundas y llenas de emociones, esta es una obra que no puedes dejar pasar.
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Welcome to Now on Stories. Today we present Incesto: an original novel by Eduardo Zamacois, a work that explores the depths of human obsession and despair. In this story, the author immerses us in a dark world where family secrets and forbidden passions determine the destiny of his characters. Join us on this fascinating literary journey filled with intense emotions and unexpected twists. Chapter 1. Mercedes said goodnight and left: she was sad, somewhat pale, with purplish dark circles under her eyes and the wandering, bright gaze of nervous women whose poison of obsession prevents them from sleeping peacefully; and the two old men remained seated, gazing at each other with a melancholic air . He sat in a comfortable cane armchair with a wide, solid back. He was an old man of about sixty, wrapped in a dark robe that fell along his tall, gaunt body in folds of majestic, priestly severity. His chest was narrow, his weak bustline hunched forward, obeying that vicious physical tendency of people who grow old sitting down. His hands, beneath whose wrinkled skin large blue veins snaked, grasped the armrests of the chair with the sharp , yellowish fingers of a convalescent. That soft, sickly, and insignificant body contrasted powerfully with his head; an apostolic head reminiscent of that of Ernest Renan in his later years, and in which the noble majesty of old age and the bizarre gallantry and heroic spirit of youth were united. He had the forehead of a great thinker, high, curved, and neatly furrowed by the vertical crease of reflection and the horizontal wrinkles that parallel the long imaginative efforts. That brow saddened by old age was a confession, the novel of a man of great experience, the most moving and eloquent page of a masterpiece: a serene and grave brow that surely conceived strange thoughts, that felt very deeply, and that suffered cruel disappointments running through the painful lyre of sensations: ambition, enemy of dreams, mortal hatred of the common people, stupid worshippers of those mediocrities whom a capricious twist of fate had placed at the zenith of undeserved popularity; the anxieties that precede great artistic struggles, the inexpressible joy of realized hopes , the agonizing memory of lost illusions… and which, after long years of cruel labor, appeared wrinkled and withered, like the womb of fertile women who have given birth to many children. Her eyebrows were white, strong, and bushy; her beautiful blue eyes had the motionless, steady, and dreamy gaze of withdrawn spirits engaged in interminable soliloquies; her nose was aquiline, her lips thin and nervously closed, her face was Dantesque, dry and gaunt, without a beard or a trace of a mustache, and her silky white hair curled over her ears , simulating quite exactly the shape of ancient palace wigs. This is how Don Pedro Gómez Urquijo appeared, the inimitable narrator of sensual love: sprawled in his sturdy work chair, wrapped in his robe, with his energetic face, his sun-kissed, ardent eyes of an old lover, his long, ivory hands of a convalescent, and his narrow bust that seemed to laboriously support the weight of his head, perhaps too large. Seated in front of him, Balbina Nobos, his wife, looked at him attentively, like someone about to hear interesting revelations. She was a plump, pleasant old woman, dressed in black, who took great care in her grooming and makeup, and in covering her years with the fortunate ability that little women have for this . There was a moment of silence, during which Gómez Urquijo seemed to be lost in twisted thoughts. Then he said: “Where is Mercedes going?” “To her room, to sleep,” Balbina replied, fixing her weepy eyes of a submissive woman on the deep, grave ones of Don Pedro, and added: “Why did you say that? ” “Because when he left here he was carrying a book.” “Yes, perhaps… ” “Did you see it? ” “No… but almost every night he falls asleep reading. ” “Ah! ” She frowned slightly, sensing the confession of something very important. He continued: “You should have told me. ” “Well… I haven’t thought about it… Did I do wrong?” Gómez Urquijo did not reply. “I didn’t know that nighttime reading was harmful,” Balbina added; “Mercedes doesn’t know either. I’ll warn her tomorrow… or later… ” Saying this, she moved her little chair closer to the armchair, always fixing on Don Pedro her inquisitive and solicitous eyes of a complacent woman. Balbina could not guess what the old man meant. “Are books bad?” she murmured. “Yes,” he replied in a deep voice; “yes… very bad; and the better written, the more fatal, the more poisonous, for the impressionable youth who keep their restless senses open to sin. Suddenly, as if the cunning and subtle wit of a practical psychologist had found connections between certain real details and Mercedes ‘s readings , he added: “Tell me: Do Carmen and Nicasia come here often? ” “Yes, very often. ” “And what do you know about Roberto Alcalá? ” “Nothing… what can I know?” The face of the simple old woman reflected utter curiosity and astonishment , and although she understood nothing, she continued to observe Don Pedro’s impenetrable countenance with that meticulous zeal with which true chess players study the board. “Is it true,” he continued, “that Carmen and Roberto are having a relationship? ” “I don’t believe it: I’ve seen them together many times, and they don’t seem like lovers to me. ” He flirts with her, and she, flirtatiously, accepts with a laugh… but there’s nothing serious, nothing formal. “What if Carmen and Nicasia are the pretext or the cover that Roberto and Mercedes use to communicate without shame?” Balbina sat up straight, raising her eyebrows and opening her eyes in wonder. “What! Impossible!… Do you think so?… I haven’t surprised anyone. ” “Oh, who knows!… You’re an innocent, a statue that looks without seeing. Go on, find out if Mercedes went to bed, and come back…” She left dismayed, walking on tiptoe, with the unconscious stealth of a woman who, in thirty years of married life, had grown accustomed to never interrupting the silence her husband demanded for work. Gómez Urquijo remained motionless, his face resting on the palm of his hand, absorbed in the contemplation of something sinister. The room where he was was a vast rectangular office, at the ends of which were large glass-doored bookcases, behind which appeared hundreds of books, some bound, others in paperback, all piled up in a chaotic jumble, as if infected by the impatience of the feverish hand that handled them. To one
side, next to the balcony, was the table at which Gómez Urquijo wrote: a legitimate worktable, large and solid, on which there were no silver inkwells, Sevres statuettes, or any other useless knick-knacks, but thick stacks of pages and half-open books; and next to a bronze lamp with a green shade, a goblet full of ink. It was from there that Gómez Urquijo had obtained all his artistic glory: his Eva and Head of a Woman, the two books that earned him a place of honor among the leading novelists of his time. The light from the lamp shed its soft greenish effluvia on the table where the written papers, the blank pages, the books with margins dotted with obelisks and mysterious signs, understandable only to their author, lay piled up and in disorder, like the dead on the battlefield; and then it spread through the rest of the room, weakly illuminating the paintings and portraits caught in the wickerwork of elegant Japanese mats, reflecting in the glass cabinets and timidly battling with the shadows that invaded the extreme corners, while the upper edge of the tube cut out on the ceiling a luminous circle, similar to the nimbus that surrounds the heads of the saints that adorn the pages of the mystical books. In front of the table, hanging on the wall, was a clock, in whose steel entrails resounded the isochronous and anguished ticking of time passing. Gómez Urquijo continued meditating with his chin resting on the palm of his hand, and the dramatic contraction of his brow gave tautness and smoothness to his forehead, which shone in the shadows with the yellowish color of old bones. At such moments, his imagination, traversing intricate paths, tried to come up with ideas that, judged superficially, could bear no connection, and which, nevertheless, implied alarming ties between Mercedes’s nightly readings and that Roberto Alcalá, whom his acute suspicions as an old worldly man and a father supposed to be lurking in the young woman’s heart. When Balbina reappeared, walking, as always, on tiptoe, the old man interrogated her with his eyes. “Yes,” she replied, “he’s gone to bed, he’s asleep… We can chat without embarrassment.” She had sat down again in the low chair, leaning her elbows on Don Pedro’s knees, her eyes wide with curiosity and her head tilted back, in the attitude of a child waiting to hear an interesting story. “I will speak to you,” Gómez Urquijo began, “as if I were addressing a colleague; or, better than a man of letters, a close friend, a brother … since the deep love that unites us will surely put your abilities on a par with my discourse . I, my dear, devoted as I am to my absorbing task of eternal composing of arguments, live somewhat outside of reality, in perpetual imbalance, and it takes me a long time to perceive even the most obvious and trivial facts… And tell me that the same thing happens to you as well, although for opposite reasons; Well, I don’t know how to use my eyes wisely, having employed them in the intimate contemplation of broad horizons, and you, through excessive candor—innocence is a myopia of understanding—neither do you know how to put yours to useful use. However , a few days ago I had a moment of lucidity, of vulgarity, if you will, that revealed to me the clue to a great secret. One night, upon entering the dining room, I surprised Mercedes leaning her elbows on the table, reading a book, devouring it… When she saw me, she slammed it shut and tried to hide it by throwing her handkerchief over it. That embarrassment revealed a sin. At that time, however, I said nothing… because nothing occurred to me; but I left with the image of what I had seen engraved in my memory: Mercedes, her eyes brightened by emotion, reading a book, dreaming about it… Strange case! I, who care nothing for nothing, because I have a carefree nature, insensitive to the small events of ordinary life, continually reconstructed that scene, so insignificant at first, and little by little, the more I examined it, the more serious it became. I didn’t speak to you about any of this , so as not to alarm you; but for several days the image of Mercedes reading took up many hours of my work. I saw the dining room, with its furniture, its paintings, and our daughter under the torrent of light projected by the lamp suspended in the middle of the room, her elbows on the table and her head in her hands, whose white fingers seemed to nervously finger the black curls of her curly, passionate hair ; motionless, devouring a love story, perhaps transformed herself into a novelistic heroine. Do you understand?… It haunted me, obsessed me; It was an inescapable, persistent, torturing memory, like a nightmare… He paused for a moment to gather his breath, and in the silence of the room the clock struck ten, which then continued tick-tock, tick-tock, fulfilling its fateful task of subtracting seconds from life. Balbina remained suspended and open-mouthed, still unable to glimpse the true end to which all that speech was directed, and with a face on which the old man’s words had stereotyped the features of supreme stupefaction. Don Pedro continued: “In the following days, I dedicated myself to observing Mercedes minutely. Believe me, great novelists—and I, who have succeeded, can classify myself among them—possess extraordinary powers of observation. Do not hesitate, therefore, to admit my suspicions as rigorously valid. Mercedes has a secret… I saw her pale, her head downcast, her face withered by the hidden and fierce movement of fixed ideas, and I recognized that some grave cataclysm was taking place in her soul. Then, remembering that my books feature women afflicted with unattainable illusions and sensual delusions, and that perhaps my daughter was one of so many sick romantics, I thought of Roberto Alcalá, as I might have thought of any other man, and I feared the influence that famous novels and all the books that serve more to the recreation and relaxation of the soul than to the edification of consciences exert on restless imaginations . Do you understand now? The old woman was indeed beginning to understand. “Yes, yes,” she said, “perhaps you’re right… However, I, who go everywhere with Mercedes and know this Roberto, have seen nothing. ” “Oh, naturally! You are a candid, very simple spirit, who doesn’t know how to read between the lines, and this blindness of yours only increases my anxiety… ” “What do you fear, then? ” “Oh, I fear many things!… I fear that Mercedes will fall in love with someone who doesn’t deserve it, and that this wretch will exploit for his own benefit our daughter’s heart, bastardized by the teachings of evil writers.” He had leaned back in his seat angrily, bringing down a resounding slap on the arm of the chair; a wave of blood flushed his cheeks, usually colored by mental exertion, and, beneath the double arch of his white eyebrows, his eyes shone angrily. “Who denies,” he exclaimed, “that Mercedes, excited by the reading of perverse books, does not covet those artificial paradises concocted by the voluptuous imagination of ardent virgins, and passions and madness and delights without numbers?… I, who dedicated my existence to books, am afraid of them. The influence of reading is more transcendental in women than in men, because your constitution is more delicate and therefore more conducive to assimilating the author’s ideas. The virgin, fasting, as she is, from all bastard impressions, reads avidly at random, eager to discover the secrets of a society whose joyful murmur she perceives through the doors that guard it.” That book is the forbidden fruit , the magical amulet that reveals the Venusian secrets that her restless maidenhood glimpses despite the white trompe l’oeil of innocence, the little key to the unknown world inhabited by the laughing gnomes of happiness and delight… Gómez Urquijo stopped. Balbina continued hanging on his lips, staring at him fixedly, without blinking, as if in those solemn moments her pupils also served as a means of hearing, fascinated by that same recollection that great men inspire in their wives. This wasn’t a dialogue; it was a monologue, a meditation aloud. Urquijo continued: “The virgin reads and reads… sucking the poison of reality through her dilated eyes; chapters follow chapters, scenes multiply.” There they learn prematurely the tricks women use to interest the fickle hearts of men, and the stratagems shrewd conquerors employ to subdue women’s virtue; there they discover that wives are not always faithful to their oaths and that there are countless schemes to elude the vigilance of jealous husbands; there they learn the pleasure of trysts, the vicious indiscretions of the salons, the mysteries of the bedroom, the arts they must employ to enhance their beauty and become more desirable; there, in short, they lose the candor of their spirit, and their early imaginations quickly age listening to the enervating voice of disenchanted experience… And ah!… I will not allow Mercedes, the daughter of my soul, to be one of so many… He spoke for a long time, repeating the same ideas with tireless persistence. “Above all,” he added, “I do not want her to read any of my books; not one!” Balbina shuddered. Why? Were those books so harmful? interesting, so passionate and so moving that she could never read it without crying? “I’ll do it as you command,” she said, lowering her head; “but everything you’ve written is so suggestive, so admirable, so beautiful!” For thirty years, she had witnessed, hour after hour, the conception, planning, and orderly development of those volumes, the foundation and shield of Gómez Urquijo’s glorious reputation. Urquijo conceived the primitive idea, the master concept of each book in bed, beside her, during endless nights of cruel vigil, during which the artist’s brain worked, aided by the darkness of the bedroom. And she successively saw how that idea grew and was perfected, acquiring greater clarity and branching out into others, and how the novelist baptized and moved the various characters, interspersing delightful episodes into the narrative and advancing directly toward the outcome. She, in short, a mere spectator of those creations, thought about them and felt them as much as their author himself, and then wept with emotion as she scanned the pages peppered with strikethroughs and filled with hastily written lines, in the thick, uneven handwriting of men of action, and helped correct the proofs; and later, she savored, as if they were her own, the applause the book won. In those volumes were pieces of his brain and fragments of his soul; she had seen them born and develop, perhaps she had inspired them… So that upon hearing Gómez Urquijo loathe them, she dared to repeat several times , with lowered eyes, as a kind of gentle protest: “As you wish, of course… no one can say that better than you!… But they are so beautiful, so lovely!” “Yes, I know. ” “Then…” “For the same reason that they are very beautiful, very suggestive, very captivating… I don’t want him to read them.” She replied in a very low voice, with the meekness of a servant in love: “I don’t quite understand… ” “But I understand myself… and that’s enough!” She was becoming increasingly excited, increasingly irritated by an idea that vigorously reverberated through her depths and which she refused to confess. It was the great secret of her artistic life, the cruel doubt that fueled her greatest triumphs, an incommunicable professional mystery that she had rarely bothered about, and which now suddenly resurfaced demanding a definitive and peremptory resolution: the eternal battle between the moral and the artistic, between the good and the beautiful. Urquijo rubbed his hands impatiently, nervously; Balbina continued to scrutinize him attentively, waiting for an answer. “But tell me,” she added after a long interval of silence, “clear my doubts: are your books bad?” The venerable face of Pedro Gómez Urquijo expressed supreme anguish, as if the intimate combat that the man and the writer were waging at such moments had torn at some very delicate, very sensitive fiber. After the first moments of hesitation had passed, the man and the father defeated the artist. “Yes,” he replied in a barely audible voice, “my books are bad, they are disastrous books. ” “Ah! ” “As an author, I applaud them and consider them worthy of comparison with the best; but, as a man with daughters… do you want me to be frank?… Well, as a father… word of honor!… I condemn them. ” “Then why did you write them?” He asked his question, that question that so few great artists could answer, innocently, with the terrible naiveté of a child who playfully shoots a firearm at his brother. Urquijo shrugged, stunned. –“I don’t know why I wrote them!… We artists produce fatally, obeying an excess of vitality that bubbles within us, and experiencing immense pleasure in producing, but without having an exact conscience of the beneficial or harmful, useful or perverse condition of our work. ” She spoke stammering, not knowing how to excuse the nefarious work of her entire life: and as her confusion and bewilderment of mind increased, Balbina, obeying an inverse phenomenon, felt herself moments more talkative and combative. “You repeatedly maintained,” he said, “that your books were very good, do you remember? ” “Yes. ” “Very moral. ” “Moral?… Yes, surely they are moral… Is there any incontrovertible principle in ethics ? ” Gómez Urquijo hesitated, disguising his thoughts with ambiguous answers, oscillating like a tightrope walker on a rope; while the old woman, for whom the life of the great man held no secrets, continued cornering him between parallel lines of solid and incontestable arguments. “I remember,” he continued, “that before we were married you published _Eva_, your most widely read book… ” “Exactly. ” “And then, _Cabeza de mujer_… which was savagely attacked by the critics. ” “Yes.” “They called you a libertine, an anarchist… And you wrote, in all the newspapers, terrible articles defending yourself.” Don Pedro nodded slightly. “But it seems you were arguing with sophistry and not with sound reason , since now you recognize that your enemies were right. What, Pedro? What were you thinking when you signed works you now disavow?” Gómez Urquijo had stood up and sat back down, shrugging his shoulders, arching his eyebrows, feverishly moving his thin, nervous lips. “In my books,” he said, “I recorded what I’ve seen, what I’ve experienced… It’s only natural! We old people seem like history books; English : we only manage to speak of what was… I also recognize that I am a pagan writer and that my novels form a kind of admirable prayer in praise of the omnipotent flesh… But why defend chastity when it is a denial of fecund desire, a sterile virtue, like most of the so-called virtues?… Wretched envious people attacked me… and so what?… The merit of artists, like the beauty of women, is measured by the evil desires they ignite… War, then! We must doubt the worth of the writer who was not fought, just as we must discuss the beauty of the woman who was never desired!… And he exclaimed, desperately clinging to this sophism, more proper of a speculator than an artist: “Those books are good; yes, they are good… Since they were sold by the thousands, gaining us shelter and bread for our entire lives. ” “Yes, it is true,” replied Balbina, her eyes brimming with tears; They’ve been sold! But, when you wrote them… didn’t you think your daughter might one day read them? They continued talking for more than an hour, which was a cruel torment for Gómez Urquijo. Suddenly, he had discovered the frightening moral emptiness that informed his life’s literary work; his books were evil; he was afraid of his work, because it was the work of a pagan in love only with beauty and form. What he hadn’t understood in thirty years of artistic battles, waged from the newspaper and from the chair of the Ateneo, he had just suddenly glimpsed when he saw Mercedes sad and pale from the poisonous mist emanating from perverse novels. He wanted to rudely punish the libertine men enervated in the arms of delight, without ambitions, without ideals, indifferent to social progress, like useless cogs that mean nothing in the complicated gears of human dynamism; and the adulterous women who, with their clumsy frivolities, destroy the sacred covenant of matrimony, the immovable foundation of society; and the rich who exploit the youth of the proletariat, amassing their fortunes with money cruelly wrested from the misery of others; and the vile nobles who drag their credentials through the mud of the gutter; and the venal judges; the cowardly writers; and the eminent men who put their influence at the mercy of beautiful women… Such was the most noble mission to which Gómez Urquijo dedicated his efforts: he fought all baseness, all intransigence, all fanaticism, and fought for everything he deemed good and just blindly, with admirable zeal and tenacity . But the path he chose to achieve such lofty goals was not Well. To castigate the judges who sell themselves, the employed aristocrats and the libertines stripped of all virtue, he had to paint in his novels bribable judges and vagrant noblemen and contumacious scoundrels and women of the most diverse categories and temperaments… And these characters, obeying the pagan idiosyncrasy of the author, failed to embody Gómez Urquijo’s thought: all his women were beautiful, adorable, vicious and ardent, but with a strange vice, which seemed an inseparable cause and result of their very beauty, and which, far from degrading them, magnified and excused them; and all his men, if they were criminals, licentious and perjurers, were so for reasons of such magnitude and consideration, that their levities immediately found an easy shield and defense. Those figures, far from inspiring repugnance, captivated, attracted, seduced, and enchained the reader’s spirit with spells of a subtle and quintessential sensuality; it was impossible to hate those gallant men, so gallant and free of all base yeast, who lived far from the world, softened on the laps of their beloveds; nor those women, divine dispensers of the supreme good, so discreet, so joyful, who paraded through the pages of books with a captivating clamor of youthful laughter. Don Pedro Gómez Urquijo had made a mistake; he wanted to create one work and composed a completely different one: it was impossible to extract from the voluptuous lyre of Tibullus the harsh regenerating accents of Juvenal; and he, who sought to correct errors and flaws, was also, by temperament, a corrupter, a great libertine, a great skeptic, a great voluptuary. And this, the author of Eve and Head of a Woman had suddenly discovered , evoking the memory of that scene that had stirred such profound emotion in him: Mercedes leaning her elbows on the dining room table, with her short, coarse hair, her pale face, and her enigmatic, black, passionate eyes: motionless, absorbed, reading a love story, dreaming of her. “The damage is irreparable,” he murmured sadly, “for, although I could destroy with a single stroke the literary monument of my life, where could I find sufficient courage and self-denial to commit such cruel suicide?” Balbina Nobos, moved, wept, opening her eyelids wide and without a single muscle of her face quivering, and the tears rolled slowly, one after another, down the pale, flabby cheeks of an honest bourgeois girl who grew old in the shadows. “Anyway,” added Don Pedro, wishing to conclude that painful conversation , “let’s not talk about this anymore; I told you everything, I’ve confessed everything, since my life as an artist holds no mysteries for you. Now I advise you to take good care of Mercedes, to keep a sly watchful eye on all her affairs, to never let her go out alone. Live alert and with your beard on your shoulder, my Balbina, because temptation is a cunning demon for whom no conscience is inaccessible, no peaceful sleep, no well-closed bedroom. Try to fathom her soul, instilling her confidence so that, without hesitation, she will open to you the sealed casket of her secrets; share her desires, feel with her, speak to her of love: if by chance you notice that she desires an ally, pretend to take her side unconditionally and against me, to deceive me. Repeat to her that: “You can’t say certain things to your father, because men, etc…” And if for a moment you could make her forget that she is your daughter, we would see our wishes fulfilled; In the area of trust, friends often have great advantages over parents. Do it this way; I can’t take care of everything… She raised her eyebrows with the doubtful expression of someone entrusted with a task far beyond her reach. Gómez Urquijo had stood up, and as he slowly dragged his chair to his desk, he added: “The peace of our old age rests on Mercedes’s future; children are an extension of ourselves. Mercedes is my best work; let you and I see to it that posterity doesn’t gossip about her.” It would be It was unforgivable that I, who was a victim of my books, should allow the daughter of my soul to become one as well. Then, sitting at the table, he quickly consulted a book, took a handful of pages, and began to write in that broad, bold handwriting of vigorous spirits. He wrote without hesitation, crossing out very little, and while his right hand enclosed his ideas in endless strings of words, the fingers of his left hand nervously pressed the pages, abusing them, as if spiteful of not being able to serve for higher purposes. The lamp’s green shade concentrated its light on the table, and in the gloom, overwhelming Gómez Urquijo’s narrow chest, his admirable apostolic head emerged, with his bulging thinker’s forehead, his large blue eyes brightened by the sickly glow of inspiration, his aquiline nose, his thin, nervous lips, violently contracted, and his cheeks flushed with the blood that mental effort drew to his brain. Balbina continued huddled in her little chair, absorbed in the indecisive contemplation of those colorless images, detached from all notions of space and time, that rock the spirits of the irresolute. Then, bored with herself and the sterile vagueness of her concern, she got up and went to sit by the table, noiselessly sliding her slippers on the carpeted floor. Then, timidly, murmuring a: “Aren’t I bothering you?” which got no reply from Don Pedro, she extended her hand, a plebeian hand, thick and riddled with dimples, and picked up a book, any old one, which she opened at random … Reading interested her very little: the important thing was to accompany the old man, the poor companion of her life, who was there, tied to the thankless chair at work, writing to earn a coat and the indispensable gift from everyone. For thirty years, Balbina Nobos had done the same thing. Every night, after dinner, as soon as Gómez Urquijo set to his absorbing task of scribbling pages, she would go and keep him company, waiting for sleep to come, which usually didn’t take long. Sometimes the old man would mechanically raise his head and, upon meeting Balbina’s gaze, ask in a brief tone: “What are you doing there?” She, as if caught in the act of committing a grave offense, would reply: “Nothing… I’m watching you… ” “Why don’t you go to bed? ” “Later, when I’ve finished reading…” That was an excuse; she didn’t read, she couldn’t have read, no matter how hard she tried. Her candid spirit, that of a girl eternally in love, remained absorbed in the idolatrous contemplation of the man she loved. Fifteen years of married life were not enough to break the spell of that passion. While Gómez Urquijo worked, Balbina surrounded him with a sad and indefinably sweet gaze: the years, more tenacious in their destructive work than the worms that destroyed the Milan bridge, imperceptibly modified the expression of those eyes, which at first gazed with the restless eagerness of a jealous woman and later declined, growing slightly smaller as they withered, hiding deep in their sockets, from where they observed the world with the sweet and melancholic gaze of a grandmother. Gómez Urquijo never fully realized the veneration they paid him, nor those eyes that scrutinized him, detailing the wrinkles on his forehead and the feverish movements of his hand; those eyes that dried up looking at him and beneath which he could say, without a trace of hyperbole, that he had turned gray. Balbina was soon overcome by sleep, which would quickly overtake her with the force with which fatigue overcomes the weak constitution of old people and children. Then she would close her book and approach Don Pedro, offering him a farewell kiss; she would place it on his cheek or the back of his neck, but lightly and as if furtively, so as not to distract him; and then she would leave, heading for the door with the silent steps of a nurse. That night, Balbina, worried by Gómez Urquijo’s warnings, She looked at her husband less than usual. She thought incessantly about the difficult task she had just been entrusted with, and she didn’t know where to begin or how to proceed: gaining Mercedes’s confidence, speaking to her about love, and feigning protection and assistance in order to more easily discover the true direction of her feelings… all of this, which Don Pedro’s divining spirit found so simple and accessible, seemed to Balbina an impossible chimera, like building a bridge over an abyss. The silence in the room was interrupted only by the desperate ticking of the clock and the vigorous back and forth of the pen as it ran over the pages. Suddenly, Gómez Urquijo, who, despite his work, must be thinking about the same thoughts that tormented his wife, raised his head, asking with sudden shock: “Will you do what I told you? ” “Yes.” “Soon? ” ” Right away. ” “Starting tomorrow… ” “Yes, starting tomorrow.” as soon as I get up… we’ll see… You will help me… “Yes, I will help you; but don’t abandon yourself, trusting everything to me…” He resumed his task, only to interrupt it a few moments later. “Find out carefully,” he said, “about the character of her friends, whether she has any love affairs… take full possession of her mind; don’t put any book within her reach that I don’t know; and, especially, keep her away from mine… I’ll say no more!… Take good care of Mercedes, protect her from dalliances, always detrimental to the modesty and good name of a maiden; free her from bad friendships, from the pernicious contagion of bad books… and, at all costs, whatever the cost, keep her from me.” Remember, Balbina, that our daughter’s worst enemy is me… He said no more, nor did Balbina Nobos dare to say a word in reply, and in the office there resounded simultaneously, with tireless persistence, as if wanting to outdo one another, the feverish strumming of the pen, divine executor of all that remains, gnawing at the pages, and the eternal tick-tock of the clock, abominable counting machine of all that flees. That combat lasted for many hours: the pen battling to perpetuate the memory of a life, the glory of a man; and the fateful clock denying everything, mocking everything, crushing life and glory between the two syllables of its eternal negation: tick-tock, tick-tock… Chapter 2. The paternal “alert!” of Gómez Urquijo was late. While the two old men were discussing the hidden motives that had recently been transforming Mercedes ‘s previously expansive and talkative character into a withered and withdrawn state , the young woman entered her room, lit a light, and began to quickly undress, stripping off her clothes with a kind of horror: her petticoats fell in front of the nightstand; her fur collar and corset were thrown onto an armchair , and her rolled-up stockings were forgotten on the carpet, like coils of an enormous, broken serpent… Already in bed, that faithful concealer of the greatest feminine secrets, Mercedes took a folded piece of paper from her bosom, brought the light closer to it for a better view, and, leaning on one arm with oriental abandon, began to read, stretching out her snout, frowning , and making other bewitching pouting gestures of a woman who doesn’t quite understand what she’s reading. That little note was from Roberto Alcalá, who had summoned her for the next day. “Tomorrow, at three in the afternoon, I’ll be waiting for you in the Plaza de Oriente, under the arches of the Teatro Real. Carmen or Nicasia will come to get you. Don’t miss it. I love you with all my heart. Receive my best kisses on your eyelids…” A few lines composed of banal phrases, written in pencil in the margin of a newspaper, which nevertheless contained a whole poem of ardent passion, the sweetest words of the vocabulary of love, the tenderest, most captivating bars of the eternal waltz of desires… Mercedes quickly kissed the signature, ashamed to admit such a great passionate weakness, and reread the note, carefully appreciating the details of the appointment. “At three in the afternoon… in the Plaza de Oriente, under the arches of the Teatro Real.” And she repeated this several times, trying to engrave it deeply in her mind, fearing the possibility that the loving little figure might get lost. Suddenly, hearing Doña Balbina approaching along the alley with her measured nurse’s steps, the young woman reached out and turned off the light, so they would think she was asleep. Then she heard a gentle push on the door, and in the uncertain darkness, outlined by the frame, the silhouette of the old woman appeared, craning her head, holding her breath: “Child… Mercedes…” she murmured; “Are you sleeping?” She didn’t answer, remaining motionless and curled up in a ball. Balbina repeated, lowering her voice: “Are you sleeping?” The young woman smiled silently, reveling with childish pride in her mother’s deception and understanding that with this silence she was saving herself from a conversation, however untimely and annoying; but she soon stopped laughing, fearing that her white, wolf-like teeth , shining in the darkness under the influence of that timid, distant glow that outlined Doña Balbina’s profile against the blurred light of the hallway, would betray her silent contentment. In the silence of the bedroom, her breathing whispered, soft and rhythmic like that of someone who has gone to bed very tired. And when the old woman, unaware of the trick she was being tricked into playing, closed the door and started down the corridor again in search of her study, still walking with the cautious steps of a timid woman, Mercedes smiled again, shuddering all over from head to toe, with a nervous sensation of joy and cold. For a few moments she remained quiet, listening attentively, convincing herself that she was alone and that no one would again break the thread of her meditations. She thought of Roberto, of the incidents of their last appointment, which might perhaps pepper and embellish the upcoming interview… The prodigious secret of magnifying the most insignificant things and downplaying what is truly considerable and worthy of being held in high esteem; knowing how to imbue the trivial with interest, novelty, and a touch of romance, while remaining arm in arm in extreme situations, smiling at death with that admirable tranquility instilled by the unconsciousness of danger; that of forgetting the repugnant, the deformed, in order to better assess the beautiful side of events, or of sweetening sorrows by wrapping them in the consoling half-tones of a gentle melancholic poetry; those subtle psychological metamorphoses, those exchanges of feelings from sadness to joy and from joyful to nostalgic; but with a nostalgia that has something conventional about it, since it only produces a voluptuous sensation of suffering that never reaches the cruel bite of true pain; all of this, so delicate, so highly artistic, forms the inimitable happiness of twenty years. When innocent childhood stops smiling saddened by the first passionate babblings of ardent youth, the world is transformed and a new existence saturated with perfumes never breathed, of distances never seen and tender lullabies unheard, emerges from the empty existence of childhood. Playful puberty caresses the nerves with lubricious tickles, the blood runs beneath the skin inspiring a peremptory need to fight, to engage in something; At night, in the silent seclusion of the bedrooms that sheltered the helpless childhood that has just passed, the loud beating of the heart can be heard and the ears buzz, stunning the adolescent’s brain with strange murmurs, as if that purely physical sensation were the echo with which honorable bedrooms respond to the distant confusion of passions… And it is then that for the first time the young man recognizes that there is something inexpressible beneath the virtuous roof of his paternal home that suffocates. The scorching sun of Desire rises slowly, dressing the future in purple and embroidering the indigo sky of hope with cirrus clouds that simulate the hips and voluptuous contours of naked women; the vapor of Repressed passions caress the skin with magnetic effluvia; the breeze whispers love songs among the nearby woods. Everything vibrates within us, everything moves us intensely, speaking a language only we can understand: the lark that trills in space, greeting the smiling glow of dawn; the hermitage bell that tolls, recalling with its mystical vibrations the celebration of the first mass; the cicadas that sing beneath the weeds during the scorching hours of siesta; the owl that interrupts the hieratic silence of the woods with its fateful cry; and in the same way, even at the most diverse moments, the strains of music, the reading of verses that respond to a certain state of our spirit, the perfume scattered behind them by the dresses of a passing woman… everything is of interest, and the impressions resonate within the soul with a solemn echo, as the sounds of the world resound in the confines of majestic ancient cathedrals . This was the turbulent psychological crisis that permeated Mercedes’s spirit . Her childhood had passed peacefully, with no siblings to play with, no friends, always confined to the house, free from those petty diversions that fill the mercurial existence of children. She never went
to school; Doña Balbina taught her to pray, then she learned from her father to read, write, and a little geography and history, with some arithmetic and natural sciences; and much later she studied piano with a French teacher who gave lessons at home. The first years of her life left Mercedes with very few memories: she always saw the same scene, the same painting, silent and tranquil; Gómez Urquijo locked in the modest room that served as his office, sitting at a small table, writing with his eyes wide open and the motionless gaze of a man looking at distant things; Doña Balbina was now bustling around the kitchen, now lighting the fire, now washing pots and dishes, or in the dining room, sorting through the linens she was taking out of a large basket. Mercedes undoubtedly didn’t remember Doña Balbina’s face then, because he had never had a vigorous feature; but she did retain, albeit vaguely, the image of her father, with his long, troubadour-like hair, his aquiline nose, and his broad forehead, authorized by the deep vertical crease of reflection and anger. Don Pedro didn’t stay at home for long periods of time; there were many nights when he didn’t sleep there, and sometimes he was away for three or four days. Doña Balbina endured these absences with the admirable resignation of a martyr, and on her face, embittered by an expression of indelible conformity and melancholy, there was never a trace of impatience or spite. She would get up early, prepare breakfast, go back and forth between the rooms sweeping, dusting the furniture, chatting with her daughter , who followed her everywhere, always engaging in the childlike conversation of a simple woman separated from childhood only by age. Doña Balbina performed all these household chores without laughing, without ever raising her voice, silently, as if there were someone seriously ill nearby; obeying, perhaps unconsciously, her long-standing habit of not interrupting Don Pedro during his work hours. In the evenings, Doña Balbina would sit in the dining room sorting through the clothes that were needed, or reading; and if there wasn’t enough light there, she would go to the bright kitchen or to the study, but never to the office, as if she feared profaning with her presence the majesty of the sanctuary where her husband wrote. After dinner, this young woman, prematurely aged inside, would sit her daughter on her knees and they would pray together; then they would go to bed. Sometimes the little girl would ask, “And Dad?” Doña Balbina would invariably reply with her Christian lamb-like meekness , “Working, my child; working for us…” And they would fall asleep in each other’s arms, as if trying to console each other. They both shared the same message from the solitude in which they lived. Mercedes was seven years old at the time. When Gómez Urquijo returned, daughter and mother would rush to greet him. He would embrace Balbina, kissing her passionately on the lips, wishing to compensate her in an instant for her sadness and helplessness. Then he would pick Merceditas up, shouting and shaking her until he managed to put her in a bad mood. Balbina would ask: “Where have you been? ” “Out there… woman, working; you know… The eternal struggle. Last night I thought about coming, but at the last minute I went to the editorial office and then they called me from the printers, asking me to correct some proofs… Ah!… The rehearsals for my play have been interrupted again: I think the opening night will never come…” Doña Balbina, completely forgetting her own sorrows, would murmur tenderly, kissing him: “You poor thing, how hard you work!” “Yes, my daughter… a lot…” You’d say my job is one of those that’s paid by the hour.” And he wasn’t lying: the pallor of his cheeks and forehead, the disdainful crease of his lips, the violet circle surrounding his large blue eyes, betrayed that intimate exhaustion of the man who thought feverishly for many hours. Then, like an artist who, before returning to the world of his dreams, wants to quickly understand the reality where he lives, he would ask: “How are you feeling?” “Fine. ” “And the girl? ” “You see her, she’s a little bull… ” “Has anyone come?” Generally the answer was negative, because Gómez Urquijo, to hide the extremely modest circumstances in which he lived, was careful not to reveal to anyone the address of his home. After that brief interrogation, Don Pedro would usually take a newspaper out of his pocket and give it to his wife: “Here, don’t lose it… ” “What is it?” ” A small thing; an envious man who speaks ill of me… A bloody article. Keep it .” I need to take cruel revenge for all of this when the divine hour of retaliation strikes for me, with the hour of triumph. Then, without wasting a minute, he would lock himself in his study to write, and the house would once again be buried in its melancholy, sacramental silence. Although tied to his worktable, Gómez Urquijo’s spirit filled every room. Doña Balbina seemed more cheerful, and her eyes reflected the glow of intimate contentment; there was more graceful ease in her gestures, and her fingers handled the needle with more ease. Every now and then, he would leave the dining room and enter the kitchen, inspecting the fire, uncovering the pots, to ensure the cooking was in good condition ; and if Mercedes began to sing, he would meekly silence her , placing his index finger to his lips. “Shh!” she would say, “be quiet… let’s not bother Papa…” Gómez Urquijo’s presence caused her an invincible restlessness, and she often went to see him, under the pretext of bringing him a glass of water or adjusting his oil lamp. She would have always been at his side, at his feet, leaning her elbows on his knees, watching him work. But she restrained herself, fearing to distract him, and tried to control her nervous restlessness with petty tasks, waiting for dinnertime, the only opportunity when she could have a few moments of calm and enjoyable conversation with Don Pedro. Mercedes, despite her childhood, understood those feelings, which left an impression on her memory that the grinding years could not erase. She remembered very well the layout and decoration of the poor little house where she was born: with its uncarpeted floors, its windows without curtains, and its bare walls. Those windows, through whose clear glass one could see on winter days a large stretch of gray sky and vast, snow-covered plots of land, illuminated the interior of the rooms with a harsh, sad light. They were very large rooms, whose emptiness reinforced the intensity of the noise, and in which the lack of furniture unconsciously led one to speak in low voices. In the midst of such pitiful narrowness, Mercedes was happy, and she professed a special affection for each of the pieces of furniture that made up that modest apartment. trousseau. Her mother had taught her to love them with a simple, firm, and passionate fetishistic love, as if they were an extension of the family, a kind of inferior, semi-conscious beings who accompanied and served them, living an inexplicable existence. In that home, the will of the head of the family was omnipotent, and since everything came from him, everything also, and in just compensation, had to serve as his gift and entertainment. The kitchen, with its piles of plates and polished saucepans; the dining room with its small walnut table, its half-dozen chairs , and its mirror—a magnificent mirror miraculously acquired at an auction, an ostentatious remnant of opulent furniture that had fallen into disrepair; the bedroom, with its wide double bed and iron cradle; The house, in short, the entire house, with its lights and the authority of an honorable home, was the work of Gómez Urquijo, and Doña Balbina and Mercedes themselves were two more wheels on the scaffolding that Don Pedro sustained with his efforts. Mercedes learned this idea of her inferiority and dependence from her mother; both considered themselves weak, tiny, devoid of personality; Don Pedro, all-powerful and omniscient, authorized them, and they were something infinitesimal that grew with the support of something very strong… Gómez Urquijo’s extraordinary character, his ardent imagination always conducive to work, and his will impervious to fatigue, triumphed at every moment, and it wasn’t long before he subdued the daughter’s will, just as he had previously subdued the mother’s spirit. And when at night, from their beds, both of them saw the glow of the light Gómez Urquijo had on in his office, Mercedes fell asleep with the annoying impression that her father, so good, so combative, and so wise, was working for them, forging their future, suffering for both of them. As Mercedes grew up, her character became more complicated and offered very curious perspectives. She had inherited from her father the most outstanding physical and moral features: the long , slender figure, the aquiline nose, the pronounced chin that characterizes the strong-willed; and then that restless imagination, that brain of an idolatrous artist who worships chimeras, and the neuroses, thoughtless passions, and other refined imbalances of exquisite sensibilities. And, repressing this combative complexion that made Gómez Urquijo a tireless fighter, Mercedes had the withdrawn and submissive character of her mother; so silent, so ready to give in at the slightest obstacle. There were, however, very notable differences between mother and daughter. Doña Balbina was a straightforward spirit, one of those you know at a glance. If she spoke little, it was because a new concept rarely emerged in her calm, domestic mind ; and if she adapted easily to circumstances, it was because she was certain of her own insignificance and didn’t recognize the courage to rebel and impose her whim. And so she lived without struggle, diminished and as if eclipsed by the domineering, all-consuming, irresistible genius of the man she chose as her husband, wanting what he commanded, thinking like him. Her mission was reduced to accompanying him, following him everywhere, waiting for him for days on end without feeling the horrible loneliness that surrounded her, and always receiving him with self-sacrifice and affection, comforting him when he was sad, calming him when he was irritated. Mercedes was not like that: her isolation, the constant example of her mother, and the grave and always thoughtful face of Don Pedro, whom she saw laugh only occasionally, tamed, but did not subdue, the innate aggressiveness of her expansive character. There was a kind of double nature in her. She fantasized a lot and loved intensely; but the fear of speaking out of season or of not realizing her desires condemned her to eternal passivity and perpetual muteness. Doña Balbina remained silent and obeyed without difficulty, because she had nothing to say, nor free will to oppose adverse events , and Mercedes remained silent and yielded as well, although for opposite reasons, constrained by an improbable excess of self-love; she remained silent because she feared expressing herself poorly, and obeyed without protest, fearing that she would have to attack by force what she might appear to receive willingly. This concentration produced in her an extraordinary superabundance of volitions and ideas; ideas that were not expressed in words, desires that never took imperative form; her faculties, therefore, retained all their savage integrity; her pride had not suffered humiliation, nor had her will directly suffered any command that would diminish its vigor and steely temper: hers, then, was a manly character that slumbered, playing its sympathetic role of submissive daughter, more out of prideful calculations than out of her own natural condition, and she only needed a pretext to rebel, thoughtless and combative, opposing the humiliating impositions of duty with its hard, diamond-like edges. Mercedes had a pagan spirit. As a very young girl, her mother taught her the simplest prayers, and from Doña Balbina she learned that there is a hell reserved for the wicked, and a very beautiful heaven, with abundant light and clouds of purple and turquoise, among which fluttered mischievous groups of singing angels; and that there is a God who is infinitely merciful and just, omniscient, a dispenser of benefits, sensitive to prayers, a great friend of children, and who is present everywhere… And
Mercedes loved God; for although her heart, free from sorrow, had no need of the consolation of faith, she was seduced by that mystical picture, with the throne of the Almighty on high, seated upon clouds of emerald, topaz, and carmine, through which fluttering clusters of naked zephyrs passed with joyful clamor. At night, mother and daughter prayed together, each from her bed. “Pray, Mercedes,” said Doña Balbina, “ask God for us, especially for your father and for yourself… Tell him to grant us many years of life and very good health…” And this Balbina Nobos begged with such earnestness, because she firmly believed that all a child’s prayers reach heaven. Mercedes did indeed pray, but not possessed by the intimate emotion with which liturgical exercises ignite the spirit of true believers, but rather coldly, in a profane manner, with no other end than to provide herself with the recreation of wandering through that beautiful sky, populated with colors and majestic harmonies, like the dazzling final apotheosis of a magic comedy. Over the years, this paradisiacal vision faded and faded, and later, when Mercedes began to experience those invincible dreaminesses that announce the arrival of puberty in virgins, it ended by disappearing completely. That spring, Mercedes was turning thirteen, and Doña Balbina didn’t understand that June nights are opium for girls who will become women. After dinner, in front of the open window through which gusts of warm air entered, Mercedes would fall asleep fatally, under a kind of categorical, inevitable imperative; she would sleep on chairs, at the table, with her arms resting on the dessert plate; she had to be carried to bed by the handful, with pleas, with threatening cries. Doña Balbina grew desperate. “Little girl, pray. Pray, Mercedes… Mercedes, don’t fall asleep!” And half a minute later she would repeat: “Little girl, pray…” Mercedes would answer in her sleep, very slowly, in the stiff and almost unintelligible voice of night owls: “I’m coming…” And she went on sleeping. Sometimes, Gómez Urquijo, bored of hearing Doña Balbina always repeat the same advice, would shout from his office: “Shut up, woman; and pray by yourself!” Don Pedro’s angry voice resounded in the unfurnished rooms like thunder, and Doña Balbina, ashamed and fearful, did not respond; but continued murmuring in Mercedes’s ear with the persistence of a true believer: “Pray, child; if you don’t pray, God will be angry with you and you will have the remorse of having lost us all.” He would repeat this over and over again, always in a low voice, shaking her by the arm with a cruelty that could hardly excuse the sanctity of her purposes; and Mercedes, at last, prayed: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed…” but between her teeth, separating the syllables with the effort with which the music box, which was running out of winds, throws out its last chords. One night, Mercedes, frightened by the thoughts of eternal damnation with which her mother threatened her, prayed asking Heaven for everything she needed , although in an abbreviated and concise way: “Lord, give my parents good health; grant them long years of life, make them give me a pretty doll and remove from me all evil temptation…” Thus Mercedes prayed that time, reasoning, with that irrefutable logic of children, that since God is omniscient, He does not need to ask Him in detail and with rhetorical flourishes for what He already knows and is aware of beforehand; And since this way of reasoning flattered her lack of faith and excess of sleep, the devout young woman came up with those half-dozen phrases, which she recited almost mechanically, no matter how calm and well -loved by Heaven she was. Until one night, when her laziness was greater and her desire to quickly conclude her ritual prayers very great, she compiled all the supplications she had expressed up to that point in detail, into a single one, intelligible, of course, to God, with all acute insight and wisdom: “Lord: you already know what I desire…” And she said no more, entrusting to divine insight and benevolence the care of defining and satisfying with all justice her honest desires. This new habit easily won over Mercedes’s gentle spirit: tired of the endless prayers that her mother taught her, she resumed such annoying jesuseos in a phrase that allowed her to harmonize her devotion with her drowsiness; Later she composed other abbreviations, then she prayed even less, then not at all… And even she herself was amazed at the tranquility with which one night, examining her conscience, she discovered that it had been more than four days since she had prayed… The study of music contributed effectively to the development and exaltation of these impious propensities . Every evening Mercedes received a visit from Mme. Relder, her piano teacher. A tall, plain, but very elegant woman, always wrapped in a long velvet coat, with a large black hat and the kind, sad smile and humble look of servants who fear being dismissed: she arrived, invariably, at the same hour, carrying a roll of papers in her hand, cheerful but with the false and cold cheerfulness of a diplomat, and leaving behind her a strong smell of violets. The piano had been placed in the study; one of those unfurnished and uncarpeted rooms , whose emptiness so reinforced the intensity of the noises. During the first months of learning Mercedes suffered greatly; She never learned her lesson; her clumsy fingers pounded the keys without producing any pleasant sounds. She came to hate the study where she studied, with its bare walls and its window without curtains, through whose panes one could see vast uncultivated lots and a large patch of leaden sky. She hated the piano, with its discordant notes like a rented instrument, and Mme. Relder, angular and bespectacled, always smiling and forcing her to repeat the same lesson over and over again. That antipathy, however, gradually declined because music, as Goncourt said, is the hashish of women. Mercedes, imperceptibly, was yielding to the philharmonic charm: the simple exercises modeled on the principal motifs of the great operas, the popular airs of inexplicable simplicity and passion— everything amused and deeply moved her. In a short time, she made extraordinary progress. He spent many hours in front of the piano, carefully reviewing what he had learned, overcoming new difficulties, abandoning his restless soul to the mysterious passionate swaying of the sweetest melodies, feeling that all this evoked within him the presentiment of something very great that was to fill his life. Music is an art of quintessential excellence that moves the young and the old alike: to the former, speaking to them with the seductive voice of promise, because they are ignorant of everything; and to the latter, old people who have lived long and now have nothing to look forward to, singing to them the melancholic de profundis of memories; at times it is a sad, disillusioned, skeptical art, like a decrepit Don Juan; at other times it modulates joyful, Mephistophelean chords, of an irresistible seduction, that drag one to an orgy: like the god Janus of paganism, it has two faces; it is the contemporary art of all ages, evoking all recollections, bringing together all illusions, interpreting all desires; the art that weeps with Margarita, that dies with Traviata, that loves with Romeo, that awakens patriotism with William Tell, that bids farewell to the world with Ferdinand in La Favorita, that hesitates with Hamlet, that kills with Otello… Mercedes, like all great lovers, felt, despite her candor, something of all this. Chopin’s nocturnes and Beethoven’s symphonies subjected her nerves to contradictory emotions: sometimes she was overcome by the urge to cry from unknown pains that seemed to flutter by, like fateful birds, very close to her; other times, she felt the urge to laugh, to move, with the disordered movements and twists of a lascivious bayadère, and generally she established prodigious connections between the most disparate terms and concepts: thus, for example, listening to a tango, she would reconstruct a painting of Andalusian scenes that Gómez Urquijo had in his office; while the waltzes, that favorite dance of aristocratic salons , reminded her of a glass of champagne, chipped and useless, that her mother had kept since time immemorial on a shelf in the kitchen, like a melancholic trophy of past feasts. The following year, Mercedes entered the Conservatory, and Mme. Relder, who nobly confessed to having taught her young pupil everything she knew, was dismissed. Every afternoon, Doña Balbina and her daughter would go out carrying music papers in a large drawing bag, arm in arm as if protecting each other from the passing cars and pedestrians . They would continue along Jacometrezo Street and then cross Santo Domingo Square, heading toward the Royal Theater. Doña Balbina would accompany Mercedes to the Conservatory door and then leave , returning an hour later at the end of class. These daily walks, although obligatory, provided Mercedes with great distraction and recreation. She walked quickly, clicking her heels loudly, her hands tucked into the pockets of her elegant little gray overcoat, understanding that the slight shadow cast by the brim of her round hat greatly enhanced the interesting Hebrew pallor of her face and the darkness of her eyes, delighted to have an occupation that required her to go out daily, glancing at the men out of the corner of her eye and proud to notice that they, too, were noticing her… Mercedes soon became friends with some of her classmates, especially Carmen and Nicasia Vallejo, daughters of a poor widow known to Doña Balbina; and due to this circumstance, as well as to the fact that Carmen and her sister lived on Mesonero Romanos Street, almost on the corner of Jacometrezo Street, Mercedes and her two impromptu friends always left class together. The affection that attracted the three young women from the very beginning grew rapidly. Carmen was the oldest, Nicasia the youngest, and although one was five years older than the other, they both had the same temperament, the same witty, giggling little genius: they were two very gallant bodies, governed by two very crazy little heads. Carmen and Nicasia went to the Conservatory alone. When they returned from class, Mercedes and her two classmates would walk up Santo Domingo Hill in a group , talking about music or commenting on some interesting incident that had occurred during the lesson; Doña Balbina would follow them with Kalkbrenner and Clementi exercises under her arm. During those walks, the three friends would talk about the projects and aspirations they planned to pursue in the future. “I’ll dedicate myself to the theater,” Carmen would say. “Me too,” Nicasia added. “What!” Mercedes exclaimed. “Are you going to dedicate yourself to the theater?” Will you have the courage to go on stage?… “Why not?” Nicasia replied, laughing. “Actresses live very well, they earn a lot… and besides, the life of the theater is very happy. ” “Even if that weren’t the case,” Carmen said, “the income our good father left us when he died is meager, our expenses are very high, and when there is the obligation to support a family, work is urgently needed… You don’t know what that is!” She spoke seriously, with the authority of an experienced woman, and Mercedes looked at her, surprised to see her so thoughtful and foresighted. “And you,” Carmen asked, “what do you plan to do?” Mercedes shrugged her shoulders, with the nonchalance of a child who still has many years ahead of her. “I don’t know,” she said. “Do you hope to get married? ” “Yes…” Carmen made a vague gesture and smiled. Women predisposed to fall always insist on asserting that men are unmarriageable. “That’s difficult,” she said. “Difficult?… Why?” “Oh!… What do I know!… Do you have a boyfriend? ” “No… ” “Bah!” Nicasia interrupted. “If you’re not looking for a boyfriend, how are you going to get married?” Mercedes blushed greatly; she was reluctant to admit that she wasn’t allowed to go out alone and that she had never spoken to a man. “We,” Nicasia added with that nonchalance instilled in the innocence of girls or the shamelessness of courtesans, “have had many boyfriends.” Mercedes’s musical progress was so rapid that she was soon among the most gifted students in her class. Carmen Vallejo, who wasn’t envious, advised her: “You should follow our example and dedicate yourself to the theater. You have a beautiful voice, you’re pretty… Next year, I’ll join the elocution class.” Mercedes shook her head sadly. “I’d like to be an actress too. ” “Then… ” “Oh, I can’t! ” “Why? ” “Because… my parents wouldn’t let me. ” “Silly… you’ll convince your mother right away, and your father… who knows! Above all, true artists, artists at heart, must obey no one but their own instinct, and resolutely follow wherever that instinct leads them… ” “And do they let you?” Mercedes asked worriedly. “Yes. My mother doesn’t applaud our determination, but she doesn’t oppose it either. Besides, we have the protection of a relative, who is an actor. ” “Ah! ” “Yes, a cousin of ours, Roberto Alcalá… whom you may have heard of… ” “Indeed…” said Mercedes, “I think he was at our house one day, talking with my father… When you are young, you become close quickly. A few months after meeting, the three friends seemed like sisters; They had told each other everything, their most hidden secrets, their most daring hopes. Mercedes visited Carmen and Nicasia’s house; they were quick to return the visit, and Doña Balbina and Vallejo’s widow had, on this occasion, the opportunity to renew their old friendship. All this contributed to strengthening the affection that united the three young women, and since they were practically neighbors, they were always at each other’s houses, or vice versa, reviewing music lessons or teaching each other embroidery or marquetry, which Carmen, especially, was very fond of. All this was happening behind Gómez Urquijo’s back, who lived far from reality, immersed in the phantasmagorical world of his fictional fantasies… And so Mercedes, insensibly, without trying, was leaving the right path, pushed by the omnipotent hand of impenetrable Destiny… One afternoon, leaving the Conservatory, Doña Balbina, contrary to her custom, complained that “the girls” were walking too quickly. “Slow down, slow down,” she repeated; “I can’t keep up with you… ” Mercedes made a gesture of disgust and did not respond. “Why don’t you go out alone?” Carmen asked, lowering her voice. “They won’t let me. ” “Have you ever tried? ” “No.
” “Well, it’s important that you try; Nicasia and I will help you… What Devil!… Mothers, when they get old, tend to become very tiresome… A few days later, the two sisters went to visit Mercedes: they intended to take her home so she could see some tablecloths they were embroidering. “We’ll be back right away,” Carmen said to Doña Balbina. “Mercedes can come just as she is: you see, since we live so close by, we haven’t dressed either. ” The old woman didn’t know what to reply; Gómez Urquijo had gone out… “Well,” she said, “go quickly and come back right away. You know I’ll be watching you from the balcony.” And, indeed, Mercedes left. It was the first time she had gone out alone . She was twenty-one years old. The young woman continued to study the piano assiduously, and the more progress she made, the greater the musical charms she discovered, and the greater the perplexities and disturbing longings of her spirit. This dangerous sentimental epiphany, initiated by music, was completed by literature shortly after. Mercedes had never noticed that she bore the surname of a great man; from a very young age, she had been accustomed to seeing articles about her father in all the newspapers and illustrated magazines, which published portraits of Gómez Urquijo, judging him differently and studying his novels and stage triumphs at length. All this, despite all the many things, seemed insignificant and vulgar to her, like everything else in everyday life; and for this reason, no doubt, she never had the desire to read her father’s books until one day… Gómez Urquijo and his wife had gone out, leaving Mercedes alone, by the piano, which awakened in her so many vague aspirations, so many nameless desires. By that time, Don Pedro’s financial position had improved considerably, and the tireless writer occupied a small , third-floor apartment on Jacometrezo Street, with three balconies overlooking a stretch of the Red de San Luis, with its cheerful hubbub of pedestrians and vehicles, and through which, with the gusts of wind, the joyful murmurs of the big city drifted in. That afternoon, Mercedes was bored, with a mood so _sui generis_, so absurd, that it ended up making her uneasy with herself. She grew weary of hearing Chopin’s eternal lamentations and Waldteufel’s perverse waltzes , and she closed the piano; then she grew tired of embroidering, couldn’t match the colors of a bouquet she was holding, pricked her fingers, and threw the frame into a corner. Then, also bored with seeing the people coming and going on the street, she let out a sigh of spite and suffocation and closed the balcony. All her thoughts were summed up in a desperate, desperate “I’m bored” that pushed her spirit toward dangerous, unknown horizons. It was the fifteen minutes of psychological conflict, the “blue hour” of great sentimental cataclysms, of terrible revelations. Mercedes opened her father’s office, that sanctuary where neither she nor Doña Balbina almost ever entered. Hundreds of volumes were piled up in the cupboards; on the walls were a multitude of portraits of actresses and writers who were friends of Don Pedro; several books lay on the table; one of them was on top of the folder, with the folder between the pages. Mercedes approached the table and picked up the book, Eva, Gómez Urquijo’s most famous novel. For a few moments she remained motionless, leafing through the volume with an air of indecision, breathing in the atmosphere of that room permeated with the strong smell of tobacco. Suddenly her eyes sparkled, her whole body shuddered, and her cheeks flushed with shame: she had just reached the conclusion of a love scene whose detailed description she quickly devoured, sensing that at the turn of each page she would discover something that would reveal to her that modest Eleusinian mystery of life, the eternal torment of all virgins. Mercedes had opened the book to one of its last pages, those, precisely, that explained the true inspiration behind the story. Eve was the enduring legend of all women; the awakening of the passions, first love, with its ill-defined illusions and its mad yearnings for happiness; the ideal seducer, handsome, talkative, witty, piper-playing, ardent; the struggle between desire and duty, between the flesh, always fragile, and honor… And, finally, the fall, the sweet and terrifying fall, with its sleepless nights filled with terrible fantasies… Mercedes reread all this with the twisted delight of a child leafing through a treatise on secret illnesses for the first time, and the reading was a poison to her. Gómez Urquijo had ensured that his works were a faithful reflection of reality; he described the world as it was: good at times, sometimes bad, but generally more bad than good; and all his hopes, all his skepticisms, all the bitterness of his soul, all his nefarious refinements of a voluptuous man, were deposited there, like a fatal slime. Gómez Urquijo was a pessimist; he believed that the earth is a disastrous world, an archive of sorrows, an inexhaustible spring of disappointments, a fatal cesspool for all that is born. Illusions, like all sweet waters, eventually turn sour, because some turn into despair, and others return, sooner or later, to the sea from which they sprang… And this was the basis of Don Pedro’s gloomy judgment: the author of Eve rebelled against death; it seemed absurd to him and contrary to the notion of a first, intelligent and merciful principle, that of being born and then gradually aging until disappearing into the hopeless anonymity of the past; And so, to lessen the fateful vision of nonexistence, Gómez Urquijo preached a sad sensualism, with outlines that recalled the funereal philosophy of the Epicureans: let us love; love is the only invincible enemy of death, the blessed consoler of all sorrows; let us love as long as our nerves are capable of feeling the intoxicating opium of desire… Why suffer? Why not mask cruel reality beneath poetic pretenses? Life is a novel that is written: today a sad chapter can be written, tomorrow a joyful one, and always, or almost always, at the author’s whim. The young woman spent the entire afternoon engraving in her memory the enchanting and fateful teachings of that book; an unknown world had just emerged before her, a world full of light and seductive mirages that, like Galileo, she felt already trembling beneath her feet; and when night fell and she could no longer distinguish the letters, she lit the oil lamp and continued reading. Everything surprised her; there she saw passions never before imagined by her maidenly, columbine candor, and scenes of a highly naturalistic color that simultaneously embarrassed and seduced her. The ethics preached by Gómez Urquijo were the decadent morals of a libertine, and his joy was something sad, contorted, and forced, like the serenity and rejoicing feigned in their final moments by those sentenced to death. Let us enjoy, said the author of Eve, let us gulp down all the delights without allowing ourselves to be influenced by the vague uncertainties of tomorrow; melancholy is the useless, unfruitful, and stupid creed of the vanquished… In those pages of his best book, Gómez Urquijo sang a brilliant song in honor of love and laughter: Eve was the prototype of woman, with all the seductions, the voluptuousness, and the criminal ardor of her sex; an extraordinary woman, a superhuman creation, purely artistic, beautiful and fecund like the miraculous Eve of Genesis, who carried in her ovaries the germs of the entire human species; libertine like Semiramis, voluptuous like Cleopatra, with that poisonous, insatiable voluptuousness that torments the entrails of southern women; strong like Judith, perjured like Helen, incestuous like Messalina, cruel like Herodias… and at times also, a faithful wife like Artemis and Lucretia, and a loving mother like Rachel… Eve summarized and abbreviated everything: the virtues, the heroisms, the abjections; the high qualities and the great feminine shames; she was, therefore, a symbol; an admirable symbol worthy of comparison with the Immortal creations of paganism. Mercedes read eagerly, admiring the discovery in that fantastic woman, her sister, since there also seems to be a certain secret kinship between the children and the books by the same author, something quite concrete of the many and ill-defined things she felt. Eve was the terrible woman, the provoker of great historical conflicts; the omnipotent and sweet fairy who stirs the inspiration of artists and tightens the novelistic knot of all passionate legends; the eternal female, always enjoyed and always desirable, who flees at first and then surrenders and later pursues and harasses the deceiver, the fickle beloved who flees; she is the eternal Desired One who offers herself in a voluptuous mirage to the imagination of joyful adolescence, intoxicating it with the symphony of her oaths and kisses and the wise spell of her caresses. She is the woman who doubts, who pretends, who loves, who forgets, and who laughs… only to be stunned by the echo of her laughter and once again want to laugh … To love, to laugh!… Gómez Urquijo continually insisted on these two concepts with the tenacity of a drunken and happy pagan, and Mercedes, as she read, became pensive, suspecting that her parents, in educating her in the austere seclusion of virtue, had denied her the indisputable right she had to commit follies and be happy. That night Mercedes slept with her father’s novel under her pillow, trying to make sure no one saw her, with the shame and fear of a maid who has a man hidden in her room. Since Mercedes did not belong to the number of those cold and fickle women who need to be reconquering them at every moment, the impact that these feelings could have on her was incalculable . First she read Eve, then Head of a Woman, and both books had an abominable effect on her : from their pages she learned the sorceries of the forbidden and the inanity of everything she had hitherto deemed good and, therefore, worthy of imitation; there she learned that boredom is the implacable worm of marriage; that a husband is something monotonous, insipid, like a dinner always served at the same time, and that if women knew that what is forbidden hides the most precious and lasting half of their charms, they would never want to marry… Head of a Woman was a perfect study of feminine psychology, insofar as it contains the smallest details: envy, fickleness, whims of the moment, salon romances, the ephemeral passions of a coquette languishing in the bosom of a deceitful society; while Eva reflected the great, devastating feelings of the soul, with its transports of unsatisfied lust, its exclusivity, and its blood-stained jealousy. Between both books, they formed an exact pentagram upon which the novelist’s highly skilled hand traced the admirable and eternal symphony of desires; with its longings, its doubts, its impatience, its trysts, and other classical mysteries that form the adorable prolegomena of supreme possession. Mercedes felt the sensitive chord of her soul vibrate, responding with electric tremors to the diverse nuances of the passionate hymn sung by those novel women, who, nevertheless, shared her same blood, her same nerves. Gómez Urquijo had infused all of them with the same temperament, which is not surprising, since the writer is reflected in his works, and the creations of his pen, like the daughters of his flesh, must have similar inclinations, analogous temperaments. The young woman recognized herself portrayed in her father’s books. She, with her short, strong black hair, her pale face, her bright, hard, obsidian eyes, and her thin, nervous body, resembled Eve, the great, passionate, tireless spender of pleasures, who died abandoned after having delighted many men; and she also reminded me of Matilda, the protagonist of A Woman’s Head, that incorrigible capricious woman who renounced her husband and children to drink champagne with a lover who had no interest in her… Those two women, although vicious, hypocritical, and changeable, They appeared before Mercedes adorned with fascinating charms, ingratiating, graceful, flirtatious, irresistible, with the subjugating charm of the evil angel. They were adulterous because their husbands were vulgar, and vicious because the quality of their blood and the perpetual overexcitement of their nerves demanded it; but always interesting, always adorable even in their clumsiness, always artists… And Mercedes loved them and would have liked to emulate them, to rival them, to be one of so many… Like her sisters Eva and Matilde, before breaking the precepts of duty and honesty, Mercedes cherished the vision of a world, an admirable stage for a perpetual bacchanal. Reading, she learned of the gentle emotions that lovers experience in the countryside, at sunset, walking under the trees and through the supple grasses that entangle at their feet, inviting them to fall; and the voluptuous melancholy of twilight, with its sleepy birds cooing among the undergrowth, its awakening countryside, touched by the refreshing flutter of night, its brooks, whose fleeing waters caress the banks with a soft lament of farewell, and its stars reflecting their cold light on the motionless surface of the marshes… And he also knew the emotions of urban love affairs: the church appointments, the maids or helpful friends who act as intermediaries, offering to carry and fetch letters, or offering their homes to those who cannot display their passion publicly; the interviews in the uncrowded cafes of the suburbs, the carriage rides… And then the letters, the horrible letters swollen with hyperbolic oaths and provocative promises , the disappointments that rekindle love, the doubts, the disdain, the jealousy; and then the more intimate scenes. Those winter afternoons spent in the voluptuous seclusion of bedrooms, those modern little chapels skillfully prepared for the worship of the goddess Flesh, a kind of perfumed abyss where lovers gradually fulfill Malthus’s sinister prophecy. Through the windowpanes , snowflakes can be seen falling one after another in an endless cascade from the immensity of the gray sky; along the walls, the furniture timidly outlines its soft satin or plush underbelly; on the carpeted floor, the door curtains, motionless and sad like abandoned cobwebs, trail their dark fringes. The atmosphere, which smells of perfume and the body of a young woman, produces a feeling of enervation, of inexplicable laxity. In the hollow of the fireplace, an oak trunk burns, crackling and splintering into sparks, throwing bloody reflections that run across the carpet. At the far end of the room appears the bed; not like those of the time of the Empire, high and narrow, for small beds are odious for seeming built exclusively for sleeping or for savoring pleasure quickly and unsavourily, like a glass of wine that impatient wayfarers drain standing at the counter; but a modern bed, low, wide, and soft, buried beneath a velvet drapery, between whose folds the worldly foresight of the upholsterer had hung an electric lamp. Mercedes knew all this, and more… She knew the details, the refinements… The mirror placed at the foot of the bed to spur weary desire, the garments thrown here and there by the lovers’ feverish impatience, the charms lent to women by silk chemises, so soft, hugging and modeling the curves of the body, and so showy, with their Flemish lace and multicolored ribbons ; the caresses of tireless manly hands, the kiss on the mouth, that brutal, decisive kiss of possession; and the kisses on the neck, so aphrodisiac, so exciting, scourging the back with a magnetic tickle that reaches the kidneys… And then those hours of invincible emptiness in which both lovers lie silent, their spirits captured by the spell of loving each other very much, listening to the simultaneous The ticking of her two watches on the nightstand; the man’s was more serious, slower; the woman’s was faster, more feverish; but they moved forward simultaneously, as if a sympathetic current also flowed between them … Such readings caused a profound revolution in Mercedes’s character, which neither Doña Balbina nor Gómez Urquijo noticed at first : she became more irritable, more uneven, more willful; the readings had lent greater precision and prominence to the ill-defined desires that had been provoked in her by the first musical emotions; she slept little, her cheeks paled, her gaze deepened, and she spent long periods on the balcony, reflecting on the monotony of her existence as an honorable woman, looking attentively at the passersby and thinking that all of them, like the men and women in the books, had their loves and their appointments. Her father, the talented author of Eve and Head of a Woman, had said so. “Life is a novel that is written… always, or almost always, according to the author’s whim.” And Mercedes complained that Fate was writing the same paragraphs on every page of her story. At times she thought of imitating the example of Doña Balbina, so good, so resigned to her fate, living in obscurity, devoted to caring for her husband and daughter; but at other times she rebelled, believing that virtue is the enemy of love and laughter, and that the future of honest women is horrible, condemned to live in perpetual minority , obeying their parents first, and then their husbands. And then marriage seemed absurd to her, a monstrous institution that unites forever two people who might hate each other on the day of their wedding; a kind of duel to the death that can only end with the death of one of the two adversaries. And Mercedes swore that some women, if they had no hope of becoming widows, would never marry. These thoughts determined in the young woman a state of perpetual excitement: always, without knowing why, she expected something new, abnormal, that would inevitably and suddenly arrive, in the form of a living being, or news, or a letter, but that would finally arrive, when she was most careless , to break the boredom of her life by spreading new horizons before her hopes. Mercedes awaited this prodigious remedy continually, at all hours, from a telegram that never came, from a letter that never arrived: as soon as the doorbell rang, she would rush to the reception, wanting to receive for herself what she so impatiently awaited, and although she counted her disappointments by days, she always fell asleep content, strengthened by her unshakeable conviction of being fortunate, murmuring: “It will come tomorrow…” Thus she lived, embraced in a nameless dream. Mercedes spoke of some of this with Nicasia and Carmen one afternoon upon leaving the Conservatory; But they, who had read very little, didn’t know what to say. “In books,” Carmen affirmed, “authors write a lot of nonsense. You, anyway, need a boyfriend. ” And she added, lowering her voice so that Nicasia wouldn’t hear her. “Another day I’ll tell you what happened to me a while ago with Luis… ” “What?” Mercedes exclaimed, surprised by this revelation she hadn’t expected. “Do you have a boyfriend ? ” “Yes. ” “How come you didn’t tell me, hypocrite? ” “What do I know! He’s a friend of Roberto’s; a very handsome boyfriend, very talkative, who gives me lots of kisses…” And she began to laugh uproariously. Mercedes didn’t make a gesture: that seemed very logical to her, very common, because, according to what she remembered reading in Gómez Urquijo’s novels, all men and women who love each other should sleep together. Carmen, upset by this impassivity, asked: “Wouldn’t you also like to have a boyfriend who would kiss you?” And Mercedes replied with that unconsciousness with which women who prostitute their souls before violating the virginity of their bodies sustain the greatest moral absurdities : “It’s natural!” At that time, Gómez Urquijo received quite a few visitors, from young and ambitious writers, actors, and artists who came to request the assistance of the famous novelist. Don Pedro, who rose early with the sun, was visible only in the mornings: his friends could see him without preamble, but strangers couldn’t pass without fulfilling those social requirements that are the theatrical aspect that surrounds and gives prodigious prominence to the exterior life of great men. First, they had to present their card or the letter of recommendation they had brought, and then sit in the reception area, on a long gutta-percha bench where Gómez Urquijo let them linger for fifteen or twenty minutes, letting them understand by such a long wait that he was very busy and that those moments of audience were a true sacrifice for him. Mercedes, surreptitiously parting the curtains that covered the dining room door, tried to peer unseen at the new arrivals. Some would come twice or three times; these she already knew, mentally designating them by their physical peculiarity or by the detail of their clothing that most impressed her, and thus she would say: “The man with the blond mustache; the young man in the light-colored overcoat…” But others, the less fortunate, passed by briefly, like shadows, never to return. Generally, they were poorly dressed young men, with pale faces and bright eyes enlarged by mental emotions. Among the individuals who most assiduously frequented Gómez Urquijo’s house were Don Pablo Ardémiz and Roberto Alcalá, the cousin of the Vallejo sisters; a young actor who had premiered several of Don Pedro’s plays and for whom the latter felt great affection. He was a young man of about thirty, of medium height, elegant and dapper, but neither his elegance nor his dapperness ever verged on the ridiculous; serious without pride, courteous without affectation. His face was meticulously shaven, and his black hair was capriciously puffed up at the temples, which gave his head a certain artistic originality. His blue eyes gazed with the imperturbable stillness of an experienced man who knows and dissembles many things, and his thin lips roamed with the indefinable, ambiguous expression of expert actors accustomed to continually feigning contrary expressions. He was, therefore, very likeable, with a charm that emanated mainly from the perfect equanimity of his spirit and from the perfect harmony between the restraint of his words and the British correctness of his gestures. Mercedes met Roberto Alcalá and Don Pablo Ardémiz simultaneously, one afternoon when Gómez Urquijo invited them to dinner. It was the first time the young woman had dined with strangers. Don Pedro sat at the head of the table; Roberto was on his right, Ardémiz on his left, and next to Don Pablo was Doña Balbina. Felipa, the maid, was pacing back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room, somewhat stunned by the presence of the two new guests. Under the torrent of light spilling from the lamp suspended high above the table, the faces of the diners stood out in powerful relief. Don Pedro, with his broad, thoughtful forehead, his grave, penetrating eyes, his aquiline nose, with movable wings that inspiration and courage easily inflated, his gaunt face, and his white hair artfully curled at the temples, like the coquettish wigs of ancient courtiers. Roberto, always solicitous and attentive to the slightest variations in the conversation, fixed Gómez Urquijo with the calm gaze of his blue eyes, somewhat shadowed by those violet circles characteristic of perpetual night owls… Mercedes observed everything. Don Pablo Ardémiz was a man in his sixties, tall and thickset, a little bald, with the bulging, parted lips of a lascivious old man; his main charm lay in his voice; a small voice, perhaps somewhat damaged by the excesses of wine and love, but affable; pleasant, sweet, and endowed with a tone or hint of irresistible seduction; and he spoke slowly and quietly, emphasizing his words with winks or gestures. The most eloquent words that made him the prince of gestures. Don Pablo’s life was a mystery: no one knew of any family, job, or fortune … and yet, he dressed well, frequented theaters and patrician salons, and smoked expensively. How did Don Pablo make a living? No one could find out, and when someone, in a frivolous, throaty tone, suggested the possibility that some rich and tasteful old woman might subsidize Ardémiz’s needs, he smiled and exclaimed: “Oh, gentlemen, nothing of the sort!… I’m ordered to retire… I can’t anymore. You know what enemies women with red eyelids and trembling hands are. ” He said this with a persuasive tone that left no room for controversy; the resigned and cheerful tone of old gallants who left the world with the proud pretension of having enjoyed all its pleasures. The figures of Don Pablo Ardémiz and Roberto Alcalá powerfully preoccupied Mercedes’s curiosity, and she continued to observe them throughout the meal. What most seduced her about them was the vicious atmosphere they both breathed: Roberto Alcalá, who lived alone, without any other rule than his whim, given over to the easy love affairs of ” theater people,” with good-humored friends and gracious lovers who helped him happily squander his money… Thinking this way, the young woman’s deranged imagination saw Roberto as Borgia, cavorting with his loved ones on a mattress of violets, after bathing them in a barrel of Malvasia… And Don Pablo Ardémiz; who had reached the age of sixty as a bachelor, and whose story would therefore be an interesting love story: with his hanging muzzle of an old libertine, his thick, hairy hands, his domineering and penetrating eyes of a man accustomed to contemplating naked women, and his voice… that voice under whose irresistible modulations the most savage virtues had to surrender and fall necessarily, fatally, with that blind fatalism with which bodies abandoned in space fall. Watching him, Mercedes felt the emotion of curiosity and fear that captive virgins must experience upon receiving their first visit from the Sultan. The conversation was carried on mainly by Ardémiz and Gómez Urquijo. Roberto Alcalá chatted little, like a modest man who has no desire to play a leading role. They discussed literature, theater, the latest sensational news. “Last night they said in Eslava,” said Roberto, “that Claudio had gone mad.” “Claudio?” asked Don Pedro. “Who is Claudio? ” “The painter!” “Claudio Antúnez? ” “Yes. ” “Is it possible?” exclaimed Gómez Urquijo; “the newspapers say nothing. ” “It’s not surprising, because our friend’s misfortune didn’t spread through Madrid until the early hours of the morning. ” They discussed at length the reasons behind such madness. “Work,” exclaimed Gómez Urquijo with the resolute accent of a polemicist accustomed to imposing himself, “the devouring demon of work is what has brought poor Antúnez to the asylum. ” “Work and the bad life,” replied Roberto, “the sleepless nights , his insatiable ambitions as an artist, the wine… ” Mercedes listened, thinking, without knowing why, that Roberto Alcalá was also surrounded by the same dangers. “I believe,” Ardémiz interrupted, “that love was more a factor in Claudio’s madness than work and wine . ” “Oh! You knew him?” Roberto asked. “A lot. ” “And you say he was in love? ” “Yes. ” “With whom?” Pablo Ardémiz, noticing Mercedes’s piercing eyes fixed on him, smiled enigmatically. “It’s almost a secret,” he replied, “a secret that very few know. Claudio Antúnez was having a relationship with a married woman. ” “And that woman?” “She’s the one who has destroyed his very core.” Alcalá and Gómez Urquijo smiled, and Mercedes bit her lip, desperate not to understand the malevolent meaning of that laugh. “It’s a horrible crime, a real murder,” Pablo continued . Ardémiz—a murder all the more lamentable since no one can punish him. Claudio died of poisoning: he was poisoned with love, and love is a very subtle poison that cannot appear in any forensic doctor’s report. And she added with an expression of fine irony: “If it weren’t so, many inconsolable widows would be in prison…” That night Mercedes fell asleep thinking about that Claudio Antúnez, whom she didn’t know, about criminal women who know how to kill while loving, according to Don Pablo, whom she assumed to be very experienced and well-versed in matters of this kind, and how, during dinner, she had caught Roberto looking at her sideways and with very particular fondness. The next day, moments before entering class, Nicasia approached Mercedes, saying brusquely: “I know my cousin had dinner at your house last night. ” “Yes; how do you know? ” “Through Roberto himself.” He told us you were very pretty and that you looked at him a lot. Is that true? And since it was, Mercedes blushed brightly and didn’t know what to reply. A few mornings later, as Mercedes was putting on her gloves and hat to go to the Conservatory, there was a knock at the door. The young woman, as usual, ran to the reception room and opened it. It was Roberto. The friendly actor greeted her courteously and asked: “Is Don Pedro here? ” “Yes, sir… In his office. Come in.” Alcalá looked at the young woman smiling, and she, feeling the warmth of that gaze on her cheeks, didn’t dare raise her eyes from the floor. “Where were you going?” Roberto murmured. “To class. ” “I really want to tell you a secret!… A very interesting little secret that only you can hear.” They didn’t speak again, surprised by the slow footsteps of Doña Balbina Nobos, who was approaching. A few nights later, Mercedes and her mother went to the theater. A drama about adultery was being performed, and the role of the lover was played by Roberto Alcalá. The young actor appeared in the middle of the first act, delivering a passionate monologue that earned him much applause. Mercedes listened to him, gripped by intense emotion, fearing that he might make a mistake, and shifted in her seat, trying to prevent Doña Balbina from noticing her nervous trembling. At the end of the second act, Alcalá performed a beautiful scene with the leading actress, the adulteress, captivating Mercedes, who listened enraptured, as if this ardent epithalamium were dedicated to her… Several months passed, and winter arrived. One afternoon, as Mercedes was leaving Carmen’s house to go to her own, she found Roberto in the doorway. The young actor heaved a sigh of satisfaction. “At last!” he said. Mercedes understood him perfectly and saw in his exclamation a proof of love, for she, too, had been waiting for this meeting for a long time. And, with an innocence that charmed Roberto, she replied: “Yes, it’s me.” “Thank you. ” “Thank you… for what?” “For coming. This meeting feels like a date…” She smiled happily; her laughter was worth a statement. “Where are you going?” he said. “To my house. That is to say, first I have to go to Abada Street, close by, to buy some needles. ” “Will you allow me to accompany you?” And as Mercedes hesitated, not knowing how honest women should respond to such a proposition, Roberto added: “Well… well… that’s it. I’m going with you!” Chapter 3. Mercedes’s youth, grace, and passionate temperament soon won Roberto over, inspiring in him a whim that, because it was so consistent and enduring, offered the gay appearance of a legitimate passion. He adored her uneven wit, at times candid, at times brazen and biting; her overflowing ardor and her unbridled desire to know everything; And as a worldly man whom disappointments had taught not to worry about tomorrow, he easily accepted the course of events, forgetting the dangers to which he was exposed and the serious consequences that such affection might bring. Roberto, in short, never thought that Mercedes was neither his wife nor his mistress; that depended on the future, the circumstances… perhaps on the young woman’s worthiness to become a mistress or rise to the rank of wife. She, for her part, idolized Roberto, although she didn’t consider the sweet possibility of legitimizing that love. In her eyes, Roberto was the most handsome of men, the best conversationalist, the most irresistible, the most flirtatious. Every part of his body seemed worthy of special affection and attention: she admired his forehead, marked by wrinkles formed by the frequent contractions of his frontal muscles; and his hands, full of experience; and his ears, which had heard the voluptuous oaths of many enamored women; and his lips, accustomed to kissing and lying. Comparing Roberto with the gallant protagonists of Eve and Head of a Woman, she found him superior to them and therefore worthy of being crowned victor in any tournament of passion. She loved his words, his gestures, the mocking and ambiguous expression of his blue eyes, the color of his suits, the cut of his trousers… even the scent of his handkerchiefs… The only thing that concerned her was Roberto’s past : that fifteen-year love affair, populated, perhaps, by unforgettable women. “Have you had many girlfriends?” she would say. “Yes,” Roberto would reply, smiling, “like all men… I am one of many. ” “Pretty? ” “Pretty and ugly… but more ugly than pretty; there is no shortage of bad things. ” “What were their names?” Was there a namesake of mine?… “No… yes… I don’t remember…” Other times she would say, ashamed of her own candor: “Since you’re such a big rascal, I suppose those women were something more than girlfriends to you… Some would even descend to lovers…” He would weakly deny it, satisfied that they judged him a dangerous man. Mercedes would insist. “Don’t be a hypocrite, tell me the truth! Did you love them very much?” “Psch… so-so… ” “Did you live with them? ” “No. ” “Why?” Sometimes Roberto, stunned by that desperate interrogation, would refuse to answer; but she would attack him, exasperated and jealous, grabbing his arm, which she cruelly gripped between her clenched fingers. “No, no,” she would repeat, “I want to know everything! Since you know my story, I need to find out yours.” I have a right to it, you belong to me… She continued to pester him, asking him about his past with the eagerness of curious spectators who, having arrived late to a beautiful performance, pester their neighbors, begging them to explain the opening scenes. These conversations took place on the street, before dinner, between seven and eight at night. Every day Mercedes went to her class at the Conservatory accompanied by the Vallejo sisters, and sometimes by Doña Balbina as well; but she never saw her boyfriend, because Alcalá got up very late. The dates were later. At the first stroke of seven, Mercedes would leave her sewing or whatever she was doing and get up resolutely to leave. “Where are you going?” Doña Balbina would say. “You already know: to Carmen and Nicasia’s house, they’re waiting for me.” “But… girl…” “I’ll be right back!” And she would go out dressed any old way, wrapping her neck in an old blue shawl of her mother’s, wanting to demonstrate with the studied abandonment of her attire that she wasn’t going far. She would quickly go down the stairs, the steps creaking under the twitch of her impatient little feet, everything thundering with the swish of her starched petticoats; and once on the street, running without stopping to catch her breath, she would reach Mesonero Romanos’s; there Roberto was waiting for her, his hat pulled down low over his eyebrows, wrapped in his rich sea-green cape adorned with fanciful embroidery, and measuring the pavement with the measured stride of a man waiting. Doña Balbina tried to oppose those liberties that she considered improper for her daughter’s honesty and social position, but she didn’t have the strength to impose her authority; Mercedes dominated her, as in another Gómez Urquijo had subdued and defeated her for a long time. Alarmed by Don Pedro’s advice, the simple woman tried to gain Mercedes’s trust , to know her desires, to discover her best- veiled secrets. An impossible task, the daughter had more understanding, more conversational skills, more imaginative resources, and more perspicacity than her mother; therefore, there was no possible battle between them, and every time Doña Balbina undertook her difficult operations of exploration and sounding, she was defeated and disavowed for a long time. “What do you want me to keep hidden?” the young woman would say. “Don’t you know, minute by minute, the monotonous use I make of the hours of my life? ” “Oh! You must suppose that my questions are directed toward your good; I will celebrate your fortunes… I will console you if you are in trouble… Why shouldn’t your mother be your best friend?” Mercedes usually didn’t respond, and the conversation remained at that point; But sometimes she let some of her true feelings betray her, finding a delicious diversion in examining the impression her confessions reflected on the old woman’s ingenuous face. “I have no sorrows,” she said, “no disappointments, no mad ambitions… but something that is far worse than all that… I suffer one sorrow, Mother… a single sorrow that seems the spirit of evil, the refined essence of all melancholy; a sadness that adds, to the gnawing itch of great ambitions, the disdainful aftertaste of incurable disappointments… Yes, I am sad, very sad; as if my heart had harbored all longings and suffered all despair. It seems as if I have seen everything and that everything bores me. “I’m bored, Mother, I’m always bored!… When I play the piano, when I embroider, when I walk the streets on my way to the Conservatory, when I sleep… because my sleep also has the immobility, the heaviness of boredom… Have you never been bored like this?” Balbina Nobos, horrified by the moral abysses she discovered in her daughter, was close to tears, and before answering she hesitated, examining her life, her serene existence as an honorable woman, sleepy and monotonous as a yawn. Yes, she too had been bored many days, so many that together they could have amounted to long years of mortal tedium… Mercedes, who read her mother’s forehead as if she were reading a book, added: “Yes, you must have had your hours of misery, but declare that if you endured them with resignation, it was because of my father, because your suffering and self-denials redounded to his benefit, and my father was the only guiding light in your thoughts. You lived for him and he for you.” The sorrows and triumphs were common; your memory filled and beautified your solitude, and your wife’s smiles , as if by magic, remedied your sorrows… In short, you realized the adorable impossibility of one being two and two being one… But what about me? What do I have? Where am I going? What can alleviate the horrible emptiness of my hours?… Then I remembered that miraculous remedy I expected from anywhere : from a telegram I didn’t receive, from a letter or a person who never arrived… If, finding myself in my room, I heard the doorbell ring, an inner voice that always lied would exclaim: “Here it comes.” If she walked down the street, an inexplicable magnetic emotion would suddenly overwhelm her, forcing her to think of her home and that extraordinary envoy, murmuring, “Has he arrived?”… Mercedes insisted on this, eloquently explaining the torment of the deluded who, like her, live waiting to hear the voice of a dream; and her words were so passionate and her pain so sincere that Doña Balbina, even without understanding the gravity and psychological depth of it all, ended up bursting into tears. Although the old woman didn’t boast about her daughter’s relationship with Roberto Alcalá, Mercedes’s nocturnal outings disgusted her. “That’s not right,” she would say; “no single woman jealous of her good name walks the streets alone, especially at night… Ah, if your father only knew!” But the young woman rebelled, imperiously demanding her right to be happy; since she worked all day long like an old woman burdened with obligations, it was only right that at night she should seek a moment of innocent solace in the company of some friendly neighbors. And she added resolutely, trusting in the protection of Nicasia and Carmen: “Leave me alone and don’t torment me. What am I asking for? What pleasures do you give me? I don’t go to parties or to the theater; my father, absorbed in his chores, doesn’t bother me… neither do you… So what do I live for?” To play the piano and sort through the dirty laundry? What a lovely future! I think you should protect these innocent amusements of mine, considering how much you love me, and try to keep my father from being ignorant of them, because neither he nor I are of a suffering nature, and a clash between us could be disastrous for everyone. While speaking thus, her beautiful head assumed a belligerent expression that seemed to encircle it in a battle wreath: the black curls on her forehead stood out and trembled, as if she were twisting them in anger ; The nervous wrinkle of her nose deepened, her cheeks paled, and beneath the double arch of her brows shone her obsidian eyes, black and hard… And Balbina Nobos lowered hers, inhibited by the irresistible magnetic power of that grave and despotic gaze of Gómez Urquijo, the same authoritarian brow, the same iron will that had tyrannized her during thirty years of marriage… In this way, Doña Balbina, fearing to provoke discord between father and daughter, and finding nothing very reprehensible in the latter’s conduct, accepted as good and even necessary the daily repetition of those walks, concealing them and thus becoming an unconscious accomplice of Mercedes. The young woman skillfully took advantage of these maternal condescensions to see Roberto, and the small difficulties she had to overcome to get out seasoned his love with an inexplicable charm. Roberto always arrived punctually at the meeting place and, wrapped in his cloak, began strolling down Mesonero Romanos Street, but without ever peeking out onto Jacometrezo Street, fearing that Doña Balbina might spy on him from the balconies of her room. The weather was generally inclement; the light from the lanterns reflected off the damp cobblestones, and the air, rising from the end of the winding alley like a belch from a sewer, was impregnated with a strong smell of damp earth. The men passed by, muffled up to their eyes; the women, all laborers leaving work, hurried along, wrapped in their shawls, and Roberto stared at them, always wary of the possibility of a surprise. Then Mercedes arrived, running and looking back, and there was such shock and such happiness in her eyes that some passersby turned their heads. The words of her greeting, though vulgar, caressed the actor’s ears like an arpeggio. “I’m here now,” he said. “Thank you, woman…” They linked arms and together began walking toward Abada Street: she, happy to have come overcoming obstacles, in her opinion enormous; he, happy too, feeling the arm of the eternally Desired One on his arm, with her short, thick hair, and her black eyes shining feverishly on her pale, Hebrew cheeks. Mercedes’s passion was gradually rising. If she had been able to receive Roberto in her home with the prosaic tranquility that dulls the hours of convenient courtship, she would surely have loved him less. In his father’s books he learned to love the forbidden, the abnormal, the dangerous, everything that Gómez Urquijo’s spirit had felt like no one else and described with prodigious refinements of observation, color and relief… That’s why he loved Roberto with an expansive ardor that transcended the streets they strolled and the corner where they used to stop to say their farewells; and he loved all of that because Roberto Alcalá, as a highly worthy actor, knew how to give real and vibrant incarnation to all those deceptive visions. She loved novels… Women have a predilection for artists in general, and actors especially; no doubt because in them, as in the feminine soul, everything is trickery and pretense. On Sundays, Roberto worked at the theater in the afternoon; Mercedes could only see him for a moment in the morning, during the twelve o’clock mass; but that was almost nothing; the young woman always went with her mother, and the actor had to be content with seeing her from afar: a burning, sweet, poisonous gaze that he threw at her like a javelin, through that atmosphere impregnated with the smell of incense and over a crowd of kneeling devotees. During those daily interviews, Roberto Alcalá practiced difficult operations of observation and analysis; his affection grew and he grew impatient, and he began to feel a vehement desire to succeed soon. “Love,” says Balzac, “has its great unknown men, just as war has its Napoleons, and poetry its Andrés Chénier, and philosophy its Descartes…” Roberto Alcalá possessed some of these qualities that strong conquerors of women’s hearts possess. Imperceptibly, so as not to frighten Mercedes, but also without interruption or hesitation that would allow her to recover from her surprises and defeats, he was advancing, taming his rebellious nature and discovering the true temper of his virtue. One night, he took one of Mercedes’s hands in his own and began to caress it. The young woman withdrew her arm. “Don’t touch me,” he said. “Why?” “Because… it’s not right.” Roberto seemed amazed. “How?” he said. “So that the hand, abandoned in a sign of affection, is a crime… and given coldly and in farewell, is a courtesy?” Beautiful logic!… And since that sophism really had the reassuring appearance of true reason, Mercedes allowed herself to be convinced and offered her hand: a soft, plump little hand, dotted with dimples, that promised many caresses. Once again, in a burst of passion, he violently grabbed Mercedes by the waist ; she lowered her head to escape a kiss from Alcalá and, with that instinctive tendency that women have toward defense, tried to free herself. “Leave me alone!” ” I don’t want to, come here. ” “Oh!… You are brutal…” But he imposed himself by force. “Yes,” he said, “I am brutal… I am because your beauty, blinding me, compels me to be so. May you always inspire the same passion in me!” The day you see me polite, respectful, indifferent to your seductions, speaking with you coldly, without even thinking of taking your hands in my own, and without the vicious glow of desire shining in my eyes, you can swear that everything is over between us… These conversations offered very notable points of view; for on some occasions, while Roberto twisted his phrases, inventing tropes and niceties so as not to crudely say anything that would hurt Mercedes’s virginal modesty, she, knowing in advance where such subtle rhetoric was leading, laughed inwardly, certain that she knew everything and more than the actor could say. One night Mercedes found Carmen, Roberto, and another individual she did not know waiting for her. The young woman seemed very surprised. “It is,” said Carmen, “that I need to go to the Calle del Almirante to look for a certain friend who is to deliver me some embroidery.” I’ve invited my boyfriend here so we can all go together and you can meet him… Then, without noticing the expression of disgust that crossed Mercedes’s face, he proceeded with the introduction. “Luis Herrera, my boyfriend… One of our most sympathetic unemployed people… ” The man in question bowed. He was a young man of twenty-three, tall and thin, with large, very sad blue eyes set in a pleasant face that always laughed as soon as someone looked at him, with a smile that seemed to have cooled on his lips. Mercedes bowed ceremoniously, and Luis Herrera bowed again, trying not to be unfriendly, for he knew that the young woman loved Roberto, and the affection a woman professes for a man envelops a certain contempt for others. The four remained motionless, forming a group, waiting for the order to set off. “What? Shall we go?” asked Carmen. “It’s drizzling,” replied Mercedes. “Besides, it’s late; it’s a few minutes past seven, and I have to be home by eight; we have little time… ” “Yes, woman; I need to get back early too… It all comes down to a little running. ” Mercedes looked at Roberto Alcalá with questioning eyes, asking for his advice. “Well,” replied the actor, “if we take a shortcut through here toward Calle de la Montera, we’ll arrive immediately at Calle del Barquillo, and we can be back in less than an hour. The rain’s the least of it… ” “Come on then,” interrupted Luis, “let’s not waste any time.” They all began to walk quickly, following the route traced by Roberto. “Have you seen?” Mercedes muttered. “These fools have come to spoil our evening.” Carmen and Luis Herrera walked ahead, chatting happily, giving each other a piece of their mind. Every now and then she would burst into uproarious laughter, throwing her head back, and he would pinch her arm or hips, as if to punish her. “How crazy!” Mercedes exclaimed, overwhelmed by this nervous joy. And she added, unable to contain herself: “Anyone would think they were lovers!” Roberto Alcalá shrugged, implying that it was only natural and that he didn’t care. As they crossed the Plaza del Rey, Carmen saw her friend: a short, slim, clean-cut Madrid woman with a lot of black hair and a lot of light in her eyes. “Goodbye, Lola, we were looking for you… And the embroidery? ” “I’ll give it to you tomorrow; the lady who was supposed to bring it to me sent me a message this afternoon, saying she’s sick.” While the two women were talking, Roberto and Luis Herrera greeted the man accompanying Dolores. “Goodbye, Juanito… ” “Hello, dear ones!” “Where are you going? ” “What do I know? That way!… Where women and smoke go…” He was a young man of medium height, elegant and pleasant, with an aquiline nose and steely, steady eyes. “Well, we ran into each other by chance,” Dolores exclaimed , addressing the men. “Why?” said Luis. “Because today,” Romero interrupted, “we had decided to go to Las Ventas. But since Lola is a bourgeois woman who always has the aristocratic habit of taking a siesta after lunch … Can you believe she just got up a moment ago? ” “Shut up, chatterbox. ” “You’ve got me happy!” replied Juanito. “Don’t make me talk!” All I wanted was for one thing. “Let it be known!” they all exclaimed. They had stopped on the sidewalk outside Price’s Circus, moving as close to the wall as they could to protect themselves from the drizzle that continued to fall. “Why?” replied Juanito. “My story can be summed up in two words; an old story, very sad and very humiliating for me… It should be noted that just this afternoon, Dolores, before falling asleep, had sworn that she loved me very much, idolatrously, and that I believed her… An hour passed. Seeing that she didn’t wake up, I called her. She remained stretched out on a couch, gently breathing; a faint smile graced her half-open lips, and her face had that placidity that supreme well-being must produce . Getting no reply, I sat down beside her, suddenly moved by the whim of lulling her sleep with a love song… “Dolores, Lola of my soul, do you remember?” I went on reminding her of everything: where we had met, our first impressions, the first stirrings of our passion… “What a liar!” interrupted the young woman, “what a way of inventing… don’t pay any attention to him!” Juanito continued: “Bored by that useless speech, I got up and began to pace the room, murmuring from time to time: “Lola, my child, don’t you hear? Don’t you sense that it is I who am calling you?” And she, nothing… without waking up! Everyone was laughing. Romero continued, gravely and seated. “Suddenly, as I approached a sink to get ready in front of the mirror… I don’t remember what, I inadvertently dropped a silver coin on the marble.” And then Lola woke up abruptly, rubbing her eyes, startled by that mysterious voice that had just whispered the irresistible song of gold in her ears. “What’s going on?” she said, looking at me. “I thought you were calling me…” ” That’s why, from today on,” Juanito concluded, “I don’t believe there are women who love selflessly.” Everyone celebrated the tasty pique of the idea. Then the three couples, obeying Carmen’s instructions, began their return along Infantas Street. “Who is that young man?” Mercedes asked Roberto in a low voice. “It’s Juanito Romero; a loose cannon from Madrid.” “And Dolores, is she his girlfriend?” “Probably, she’ll be his mistress…” Mercedes and Roberto walked ahead slowly, arm in arm. Suddenly Alcalá turned his head to see his friends far behind. “Look how close they are,” he said, “they seem to be kissing…” And he added abruptly: “Do you want me to kiss you?” Mercedes, frightened, stared at him, her luminous eyes wide open. “Have you gone mad?” he replied. “No… But I love you very much, and their happiness makes me envious. Come on… will you?” He was leaning toward the young woman, preparing to fulfill her offer. Mercedes withdrew, getting as close to the wall as she could. “Hold still… Don’t offend me by confusing me with these women from all over the world.” But Alcalá was beginning to lose his mind, dizzy with the mad desire that the shyness and beauty of the Desired One was igniting in him. “Don’t be a hypocrite,” she said. “If you love me, you must necessarily understand the legitimacy of my desire. Parents and children kiss, husbands and wives kiss, friends kiss, those who love each other kiss… and I, adoring you with all my soul, why shouldn’t I kiss you too?” Mercedes looked at him, moved, subjugated by the actor’s mournful voice, that passionate, irresistible gallant she had seen in the theater overwhelming the virtue of so many women. They crossed Fuencarral Street and followed San Onofre Street; when they reached Valverde Street, they turned left; at that moment, the corner hid them from the eyes of their friends. “Give me a kiss,” Roberto exclaimed, holding Mercedes by the hands. She stifled a scream. “No, not here… They can see us…” “Don’t be afraid… They’re coming far behind… Come closer!” And grabbing the young woman by the neck, he forced her head down toward him and kissed her on the lips. Then he stepped back, laughing to hide his boldness. Mercedes continued walking without looking up from the ground; her eyes were shining, her body was trembling, and a wave of blood, a poem of offended candor, flushed her pale, Jewish countenance. She couldn’t say more; modesty is the language of the cheeks. Upon reaching Desengaño Street, Mercedes and Carmen quickly said goodbye to their companions, heading toward Jacometrezo Street, along the Callejón de los Leones. At that moment, Don Pablo Ardémiz was coming out of a doorway. Mercedes lowered her head, hiding her face with her shawl, and the old man passed without greeting them. “I think, though,” the young woman murmured, “that that old shark has seen me.” And she added, looking at her friend: “I’m hot. How am I? ” “Very red. You look like you’ve smeared your face with vermillion. ” Then they said goodbye, agreeing to meet the next day at school. The young woman ran through the doorway of her house, climbed the stairs without stopping, and arrived at her room, breathless and panting. Her mother greeted her. “Where are you from? ” “Carmen’s house. We’ve been examining some beautiful embroidery that Dolores, a friend of hers, made… Has Father come?” “No…” Doña Balbina looked at her, spelling out the truth on Mercedes’s face with her innocent, simple eyes. Then she ran her hand over her head and shoulders. “Is it raining?” she asked. “Yes…” Mercedes replied hesitatingly. “You’re wet; anyone would think you’ve come from very far away. ” “No, it’s just that it’s raining quite a lot. Carmen came here with me…” As we left her house, we saw Don Pablo Ardémiz… The poor man was so absorbed in his thoughts that he didn’t recognize me… The changes that were disturbing Mercedes’s spirit were of such consideration and magnitude that Doña Balbina, despite her limited reach, came to glimpse the threatening existence of a grave and dangerous secret that demanded a peremptory resolution. Not feeling capable of doing anything for herself, Doña Balbina visited her confessor, Don Fernando Almonacid, a man of a certain age, extremely learned, good, and very skilled in all sorts of worldly matters. However, since the old woman was unable to narrow down her questions or specify Mercedes’s moral situation, and Almonacid was not a man to judge by impressions, the consultation proved useless, and Doña Balbina limited herself to deploring her poor fortune and the misgivings that her daughter’s uncertain future inspired in her, and to listening from Don Fernando’s lips to advice similar to that which Gómez Urquijo had once given her: to observe Mercedes, to gain her confidence, to discover the intimate yearnings of her soul, either with the subtle nonsense of a diplomat or with flattery… and other discreet observations of this kind. The months, however, passed without any event breaking the monotony of that home; Time continued to exert its beneficial soothing effect on the rebellious spirits , and since Gómez Urquijo seemed cured of his old fears, and Doña Balbina would not have dared reveal hers to him for anything in the world, everything calmed down and faded away under the cloak of pacifying oblivion. Thus the winter passed, and summer arrived, with its warm, star-studded nights. Around that time, Doña Balbina became convinced that Mercedes and Roberto Alcalá were having a relationship. One night, she and Mercedes went to Price’s Circus to see Tik Nay, the inimitable clown, whose wit knew how to bring a smile to the saddest lips with his wit. In the alley of seats, they found Roberto, who immediately approached to greet them. They spoke for a moment. “And Don Pedro?” asked the actor. “Fine,” replied Doña Balbina; acrobats bore him, and he didn’t want to join us. He’ll come back later.” And you, don’t you have a performance today? “No, ma’am; fortunately…” And they separated; during the first interval they reunited, and Doña Balbina noticed that, despite the fact that Roberto was with several friends in a box very far from the two seats they were occupying, he didn’t take his eyes off Mercedes the entire evening. Nights later they ran into him again in the Apolo portico, moments before the second performance began. Then Balbina Nobos remembered that during the day Mercedes had shown great interest in going to the theater, and that this meeting could very well be a date. “I didn’t feel like going out,” exclaimed the old woman, wanting to excuse the modesty with which she and her daughter were dressed, “but Mercedes began to say that she was sad, that she was bored, and since she is very stubborn… it was necessary to humor her. ” Roberto looked at the young woman smiling, proud that she was so interested in seeing him. “That’s why we’re going to a modest town,” added Doña Balbina. I think our seats are in the main amphitheater. “That’s exactly what I’m going for,” replied Roberto. “Let’s see, Mom,” said Mercedes, “what number are our seats? ” Balbina Nobos handed her the tickets, murmuring: “Look at it yourself… I can’t see very well… ” “We have the three and the five… ” “I have the seven,” said Roberto. “What a coincidence!” exclaimed the young woman; “then we’ll be together and I’ll I’m glad… Two women alone have no representation anywhere… She continued speaking, hoping to dispel a shadow of sadness and displeasure that had momentarily hardened her mother’s affectionate little eyes. That night Mercedes experienced new impressions and a most delightful taste. Balbina had sat on her left, Roberto on her right, and the three of them were very close together, because all the seats were occupied. Mercedes felt Roberto’s naughty hands surreptitiously pinching her hips, and the actor’s knees seeking hers. Then, to speak to each other, they had to do so quietly, bringing their heads very close. Then their breaths mingled, the young woman’s hair brushed Alcalá’s forehead, and both felt their bodies shudder with a voluptuous magnetic chill. When they left the theater, Doña Balbina thought she saw Roberto hand Mercedes a small, folded bill. In the following days, Doña Balbina Nobos spoke at length with her daughter, struggling to obtain a confession of their love. Mercedes was impenetrable. She swore that she had only seen Roberto Alcalá once, at Carmen’s house; she denied that they had a date at Apolo, and she even had enough courage and discretion to assert that the man had no interest in her… Doña Balbina didn’t believe these assertions, but she had to accept them and consider the incident closed, certain that she would always be defeated. With the arrival of autumn, classes at the Conservatory reopened , and Mercedes and Roberto were able to resume their nightly meetings. The young woman told the actor Doña Balbina’s suspicions and the obstacles she would have to overcome to leave. Her story was very moving, very exaggerated. “My mother believes we are dating and wanted to force me to confess the truth. ” “And what did you do? ” “Deny everything. ” “Very well… because she will surely be hostile to our love.” Although she loved Mercedes very much, without knowing why she prided herself on keeping her affection a secret, she feared the formality of official relations, the inconveniences that Gómez Urquijo might pose to the continuation of that courtship, or, failing that, the marriage that would arrive quietly, through its limited procedures, killing her hopes between two articles of the civil code… “Yes,” she replied, “you did well… ” “I think so…” And she believed it instinctively, without any reason, as great innate sinners feel the spell of sin; instructed, perhaps, by her father, whose books taught her to see in the forbidden the miraculous and inexhaustible source of hopes. Talking like this, they walked down Salud Street, heading towards Carmen Street. “In the worst case,” Roberto said, “I wouldn’t mind this getting out, if you… ” “What?” “If you… loved me very much. ” “How?” Mercedes said, laughing. Are you not sure of my affection? “No.” “What do you lack, then? What proofs of love do you need?” “Many!… Have I perhaps received any convincing, irrefutable testimony of your love?… Yes, Mercedes, although late, I have come to convince myself that you, more or less, are distrustful and cautious like the rest of us. ” “Why do you say that?” “Oh!” “I don’t understand. ” He fell silent, shrugging his shoulders. “Do you feel like quarreling? ” “I feel like we can talk frankly.” She stared at him, not knowing how to evade the storm that threatened her. For a short time now, Roberto’s desires had become more impatient, his obstinacy greater, his attacks harsher, and Mercedes dreaded those quarrels that always wrested new concessions from her virtue, and for the benefit of her love. “How do you expect me,” continued Roberto Alcalá, “to put my trust in a woman who has none in me? Because you’ll admit that you continue to treat me with almost the same considerations you used in the early days. Today, as then, I must steal your kisses, and… or you’re a hypocrite.” an accomplished actress in the art of pretense, or my caresses are a torture for you. They reached Calle del Carmen, crossing Rompe Lanzas towards Preciados , and continued down the hill of Capellanes. “What do you want from me?” Mercedes asked. “Everything… ” “Everything? ” “Yes, that’s it… a very great test, a kind of unbreakable bond that prevents you from being anyone’s… No one’s but mine!… Well, continuing as you have been doing up to this point, it turns out I have given you my heart without you having given me yours.” He had taken her tightly by the arm, looking at her with greedy eyes, bringing his face close to hers as if to bite her; while the young woman pressed herself against the wall, hesitant, dizzy from that vapor of passion. They continued talking: he was becoming more excited; she asked again: “What do you want from me?” “I want you to be mine.” “When we are married.” “When we are married… or before!” cried the actor; “my passion will not tolerate conditions… not even those conceived by the repugnant foresight of the woman I love!” He could not continue speaking, so great was his excitement. Mercedes also remained silent, overcome with fear. Her first impulse, on hearing Roberto’s bold demands, was one of indignation and protest; but she soon calmed herself, remembering that there is something axiomatic and fatal about the fact that men, when they have succeeded in being greatly beloved, obtain every favor from their beloveds. The two had unconsciously stopped before a doorway; then they resumed their walk. “Do not wonder at this impulse of mine,” said Roberto. Truly, today I count as many reasons to despair as yesterday, but the thing is that memories always go on a leash: that’s why the provocative exaltation of great crimes is formed by small ideas and passions, insignificant in themselves, like torrents are the terrible and devastating result of many raindrops… It was almost eight o’clock. “It’s very late,” said Mercedes, “let’s go home, I don’t want to suffer any more troubles from an ungrateful man like you.” They began their return along the lonely Tetuán Street, looking for Jacometrezo Street. They continued arguing. When they reached Mesonero Romanos Street , at the corner of Abada Street, they stopped to say goodbye. “It’s necessary that you be mine,” he murmured. “I’m not anyone’s slave. ” “No?” “No… never… ” “However, I love him…” He approached Mercedes again, breathing down her neck, as if he wanted to burn her in an atmosphere of fire. Mercedes, in fact, ended up feeling that this desire was causing her physical discomfort. “Get away,” she murmured; “you’re hurting me… I’m suffocating…” Roberto Alcalá, restraining himself with great effort, took a step back. At that moment, a confused din of voices resounded toward the end of the street , from the lowest to the highest, shouting at once. The tumult was increasing: they were vendors of the Herald of Madrid who were approaching, announcing some sensational event. They ran up the street frantically, carrying newspapers spread out in their hands to better attract the attention of passersby, and all repeating the same cry: “The Herald, with the details of the crime on Pozas Street!” That crime, already reported in the morning papers, belonged to the so-called “passionate” category. A typesetter who had killed a coffee singer out of jealousy… The vendors ran by, shouting excitedly, as if they were truly bearers of great news. “Herald, Herald of Madrid, with all the details of the crime on Pozas Street and the murderer’s latest statements!” And there was something very sad about that cry that carried the memory of a crime through the streets of Madrid, and which the vendors repeated eagerly, eager to raise money, as if the pool of blood spilled by a stab of jealousy were for them a holy stream that, like the Darro or the Jordan, also carried nuggets of gold. That uproar, by virtue of an inexplicable association of ideas, increased Roberto’s furious excitement. “This is how we’ll end up,” he murmured; “you in the cemetery, me in prison. ” Mercedes tried to smile. “Fool! ” But he had grabbed her arm again and was shaking her wildly. Some curious passersby turned their heads. “You’ll be mine, won’t you?… Swear to me!” And he added, exasperated: “If you don’t grant my wish, I swear that, from today on, everything is over between us. ” Mercedes, whose throat was tightening with pain and shame, burst into tears. “You don’t love me,” he murmured. “Yes, I love you… and that’s why I demand so much, because my affection is worth everything.” The clock of a nearby pharmacy, one of those sinister clocks that seem designed to measure the agony of the sick, struck eight- thirty. “Ah!” exclaimed Mercedes, frightened, “I’m running; it’s very late and my father can’t be long… Goodbye… ” “Goodbye,” replied Roberto with his usual British coldness. “Are you angry with me?” ” No… why?… I’m convinced we must separate.” She wanted to leave, but didn’t dare leave him like that, so irritated. Finally, making a violent effort, she ran off, muttering: “See you tomorrow…” Later, when she reached the corner, she turned to see him through her tears, but Roberto had already disappeared. The young woman spent a horrible night, crying, feverish, rereading the actor’s letters, those ardent letters that offered her the blessings of an inextinguishable passion… The next day, when she went to the Conservatory, Mercedes gave Carmen a letter for Roberto. She was so out of her mind, so pale, and with her eyelids so reddened from tears and lack of sleep, that Carmen Vallejo was frightened. “What’s the matter?” she said; “Are you ill? ” “Worse,” replied Mercedes; “I’m dying; I had a row with Roberto. ” “When? ” “Last night. ” “Why?” “For a trifle… he says I don’t love him… you see… saying I don’t love him!” And she wept. Carmen burst into laughter. “Don’t cry, you little donkey,” she exclaimed. “My cousin says that because he adores you and is jealous of you. When Luis loved me very much, he said the same thing… Well, I see you don’t know men! ” “Anyway,” replied Mercedes, “give him that letter, take it to him yourself… eh?… yourself; I can’t…” Carmen smiled… “Good, good… ” “Don’t fail to do as I say. In that letter I make an appointment for him tonight, at the usual time and place.” I need to talk to him at all costs… I think if I don’t see him today, I’ll die… And she added with a little laugh that seemed to sparkle with hope on her lips: “Tell him also… but this way, as if on your account, that I love him very much… very much… that you’ve seen me cry for him…” Mercedes spent the rest of the day at home, by the balcony, sewing and looking at the sky; an autumn sky, drizzly and cold. Doña Balbina, happy to see her so sensible, was more cheerful and talkative than usual. The young woman’s serenity, however, was only apparent ; she thought about Roberto, that he would have already read the letter, that he would keep the appointment… and she remained alert, listening to the slightest noises outside, obsessed to the point of delirium by the feeling that she was finally going to receive _that_ which never came… Daughter and mother were in the study chatting, because night had fallen and the scant twilight light was not enough to continue sewing. Mercedes didn’t want to get up to check the time, fearing that Doña Balbina would notice her impatience and restlessness. Suddenly, the dining room clock chimed several times, and the young woman jumped to her feet. “I’m going,” she said curtly. ” Where ?” “To Carmen ‘s house; she’s waiting for me. It’s seven o’clock.” ” Seven o’clock?” repeated Doña Balbina, shocked. “Not even six o’clock!” Mercedes, fearing she had made a mistake, ran into the dining room: in fact, It was six o’clock. Furious with herself, she returned to the study, to continue filling her mother’s distracted conversation with monosyllables. “And you dare go out in such unpleasant weather? ” “Yes. ” “If I were you, I wouldn’t go out… ” “Well… ” “Tell me, do Carmen and Nicasia have boyfriends? ” “I don’t know; they haven’t told me anything. ” “I don’t understand why those girls’ mother allows them to come and go as they please. ” “Me neither.” The utter vulgarity of that conversation made Mercedes feel physically uneasy, like a vague stomach ache. She got up and went to the dining room, believing that a long time had passed; but her impatience deceived her, and she had to return to the study: it was a quarter past six. Doña Balbina continued chatting, with that lazy conversation of people who have turned gray in solitude. “I admit that Carmen and Nicasia are two very good, very industrious girls , but… what do you want? ” I wouldn’t want you to be like them. You’re worth a lot, you have a lot of talent… Yes, a beautiful talent!… The talent of always living shut away, without friends, without entertainment, growing old stupidly within the four walls of a poor house… That’s what the talent and goodness of women consist of!… Mercedes was thinking all this, but she didn’t want to speak, certain that they wouldn’t understand her. Besides, she knew where her mother’s questions were leading , and those clumsy probes irritated her nerves. When seven o’clock struck, the young woman stood up. “See you later,” she said. And the accent in her voice was so harsh and the authority of her gesture so despotic that Doña Balbina Nobos accompanied her to the reception room and let her go without daring to contradict her. When Mercedes reached the entrance hall, she bumped into Don Pedro, who was returning from the street. The young woman felt all her heroic courage fail her, and seeing her father so tall, so grave, wrapped in a long coat over whose fur collar the white mane of his venerable apostolic head curled , she took a step back, fleeing from the past that seemed to have suddenly risen before her, preventing her from escaping. “Where are you going?” asked Gómez Urquijo. Mercedes didn’t know what to reply. “Where were you going?” repeated Don Pedro angrily. “To Carmen’s house.” The old man’s rosy cheeks flushed, and a flash of anger crossed his blue cheeks. Mercedes was fainting: at that moment she didn’t see Roberto; she was thinking only of Don Pedro, who was looking at her attentively, with a furrowed brow and hard eyes that pierced her heart. “To Carmen’s house?” repeated Gómez Urquijo. “And who is Carmen?” “A friend… ” “I know that; what I don’t know are the merits that Carmen surely lacks… to deserve the visit of a young lady like you, at this hour and in this weather. Come on… go upstairs and forget what just happened . ” There was a terrible silence. “But, Papa… they’re waiting for me! ” “Then tell your mother to accompany you, it’s her duty.” And he added with a brief accent that brooked no reply: “Come on, get in…” It was impossible to resist, and Mercedes gave in: she went up in front, biting a handkerchief, making titanic efforts to prevent her grief from bursting into sobs. Then she heard Don Pedro, carried away by his temper, that feisty temper that had brought him so many victories and so many disappointments, go up behind her, murmuring: “And it’s his mother, his idiot mother, who’s to blame for all this…” Chapter 4. After dinner, Mercedes retired to her bedroom, pretending to be suffering from a violent headache; Doña Balbina, considering herself partly responsible for what had happened and fearing that Don Pedro would overwhelm her with his reproaches, went to the kitchen, and Gómez Urquijo entered his study and lit the lamp. For a long time he paced around the room, his eyes fixed on the floor and his hands clasped behind his back; then he stopped and rang a bell. “Was the gentleman knocking?” Felipa asked, parting the curtains at the door. “Tell my wife to come.” When Balbina Nobos arrived at the office, Don Pedro was standing by the desk, his piercing eyes wide open. He seemed taller, leaner , and his large head projected an enormous profile against the wall. Seeing him like this, surrounded by books and wrapped in the mystery of his long black frock coat, so stern, so sad, he looked like a judge who had just signed a death sentence. The old woman approached, trembling and silent. “What do you want?” she asked. “I want to talk to you,” Don Pedro replied, “to tell you that we can’t go on like this… I thought I’d married a woman of flesh and blood, you understand?… and not a cardboard doll… ” His voice trembled threateningly, shaken by anger. Emotion had flushed the old woman’s pale, flabby cheeks, but it was a sensation that, like almost all those of her cowardly soul, could not be translated into words. “Today I learned, by chance,” Don Pedro continued, “that our daughter goes out alone. ” “Quite true,” Balbina interrupted, “but she’s just a few steps from here… Imagine! I myself, from the balcony, can see her turn the corner… She usually goes to the house of the Vallejo sisters, two very good girls…” Gómez Urquijo forced a small smile. “You are a distinguished fool,” he said, “who, if she wanted to, would canonize all women. Do you perhaps know the bad habits and private habits of those two little girls?” Do you know what our daughter does as soon as she turns that corner to where you follow her with your eyes?… Balbina Nobos, sensing the justice and gravity of those charges, bowed her head. “Do you know,” added Gómez Urquijo, raising his voice, “if a man is waiting for your daughter in that cursed alley?… Oh, a long time ago, more than a year ago, in this very place I expressed the fears inspired in me by certain abnormal worries I discovered in Mercedes, and you paid no attention to me because your convoluted, scatterbrain seems incapable of meditating on anything seriously!… Doña Balbina wanted to speak: “I assure you… ” “You cannot assure me anything!” “Allow me… ” “I deny you all permission. ” You look and don’t see, you hear and don’t understand, you reason and are not aware of your thoughts… You are not a woman like the others, you are… what I said before!… A cardboard doll , unconscious, deaf and blind!… Balbina Nobos burst into tears: her weak will of a loving and caring wife was accustomed to continually bending to the will of Don Pedro and to considering his slightest whims as unappealable orders; she had lived for thirty years without free will, without desires, almost without any notion of her own personality, surrendered to the mercy of the man she loved, proud of sacrificing her conscious soul on the altar of her love; And suddenly, upon hearing Gómez Urquijo insult her for the very annihilation to which her domineering nature condemned her, she had no heart to rebel, nor could she think of a single phrase that could serve as a shield, and her pain, the infernal pain of a predestined angel who suddenly seemed to pour a jug of bile upon her story, broke into sobs, as the great moral crises of the weak generally do. “Oh, Pedro, Pedro…” she murmured, “don’t mistreat me like that!” And she went to sit on a chair, as if her legs could not bear the gravity of so much sorrow. Gómez Urquijo, standing before her, continued tormenting her, lashing her face with his words, hissing and cruel as whiplashes. “We have been married for more than thirty years,” he said, “and the literary work I have accomplished during this time is breathtaking… The passion for glory is the terrible passion that inspires and directs my life; it presided over my thoughts, toward it all my endeavors were directed… To it I sacrificed the desires of my parents, who wanted me to a more peaceful and positive occupation, and the pleasures of my youth and the comforts of my old age… for it, for that glory that at I have finally given up, I have lost everything and I am still poor and forced to continue defending, with my work, the shelter and bread of our last days… And now, suddenly, I see that my daughter, the only positive treasure that I conquered in the epic combat of my youth, is going to be lost too… And why?… Because her mother does not know how to take care of her!… Balbina Nobos wept, drying her eyes with a corner of her apron. Don Pedro continued angrily, waving his arms in the air with manly ferocity: “Is it possible that glory, which took so many possessions from me, could also snatch Mercedes from me?… What a slap in the face to my gray hair!… How my enemies would rejoice to see that my daughter, this creation of my spirit and my flesh, was casting an indelible stain on a name for whose popularity and ennoblement I had fought so hard!” How they would laugh, what bloody epigrams they would compose at my expense!… The artist’s pride combined with the father’s affection; his exalted southern imagination considered that catastrophe imminent and spoke of it as if it had already happened. “What would become of us if one night Mercedes left never to return? What would become of me knowing that a man was still breathing who could boast of having held Gómez Urquijo’s daughter in his arms, that creature who symbolizes my blood and my history?” He advanced toward Doña Balbina, waving his irritated arm above her head. “Ah, imbecile, imbecile! You will be the ruin of us all…” Balbina Nobos made an instinctive gesture of defense; the movement of a dying bull that, harassed by its matador, raises its head for the last time. “Me?” she cried in terror. “You, yes… you will be the ruin of Mercedes.” “And you too!” She said it with such firmness that Gómez Urquijo hesitated. “You are as responsible as I am for what happens,” the old woman continued; “both of us, both of us, both of us!” “Are you crazy? ” “No, I’m not crazy! Perhaps your responsibility is greater than mine. You corrupted Mercedes, that’s right! I, too, am tired of suffering in silence, like animals who cannot speak.” Her eyes were shining, and two streams of tears ran down her cheeks, colored with indignation and suffering. Don Pedro listened to her, perplexed, almost terrified. She continued: “Your mistakes are harder to correct than mine… You are the true corrupter of Mercedes, her true initiator… since your books taught her what she should never have known… Therefore, you are the main cause of all the misfortunes that befall her… Do you hear?… You, you… and no one but you!” It was the first time the mother had rebelled against her wife; but immediately, exhausted by her own efforts, she covered her face with both hands and continued weeping. Then there was a horrible scene, one of those bloodless tragedies that are never forgotten. Don Pedro had fallen into the armchair, sobbing, cursing himself, disowning his work. Ah!… Artists, always thinking of the beautiful, rarely remember the good; nature made many of them impotent, and society condemned them to eternal poverty; they are unbalanced, cursed beings, who should never marry. Painters, writers, musicians are also actors, since they set themselves up as interpreters of reality and, by dint of explaining what others see and feel, end up living apart from the world, lacking true character, transformed into melancholic puppets of life. “You’re right, you’re right!” Don Pedro repeated. “I poisoned Mercedes’s innocent soul with the sweet poison that my perverse spirit spilled over thousands of pages; I have heated her imagination and lit the voluptuous torch of desires; in vain do I now try to control the proud tide of her passions; youth is invincible, and within her “a superior power,” as the bride of Corinth said, “has lifted the stone.” It’s true! I have corrupted her; I am her seducer. It’s a horrible drama… an incestuous drama like that of Lot. possessing his daughters… And he wrung his hands in despair, recalling the articles that eminent critics had written against the dubious morality of his books, which he had bizarrely refuted with more eloquence than good faith. But it was useless to defend himself; the damage had been done. Gómez Urquijo understood that the most diverse elements were conspiring against him, as if obeying the inexplicable, nefarious designs of Destiny: Carmen, Nicasia, Roberto, even Pablo Ardémiz himself with his traits of an old scoundrel, and Mme. Relder, who had in an unfortunate hour awakened in Mercedes a fondness for music—all were enemies who had come, like bandits in a gang, to rob her of her last hope. Faced with that sinister prospect, Gómez Urquijo let his arms fall with the abandonment of a man who surrenders, experiencing a sensation that his uplifted spirit had never known: the sensation of his own weakness and smallness. There was a long interval of silence during which the clock continued to rhyme, with its devouring tick-tock, the sinister parade of that which never returns. Doña Balbina peered at the old man through the folds of her apron. She had never seen him like this, so dejected, so unsure of himself , and her conscience was beginning to accuse her of having treated him cruelly; she should have used more caution in her observations, more civil restraint in her attacks, and not annihilate him by suddenly throwing the world of his books at his head; those books written with such affection and defended with such zeal. Then Balbina Nobos approached Don Pedro. “Forgive me,” she said; “I understand that I did wrong by speaking to you like this and meddling in matters I don’t understand.” What can I possibly care about whether your works are bad or good? Surely they are excellent, when I, who am very clumsy, like them so much… Don’t pay attention! I have a poisonous, impetuous little temper… and when I get going I am terrible. Then I regret it, I swear, and to punish myself I would be ready to bang my head against a wall. Forgive me, Pedro… Pedro… say you forgive me… She caressed him, kissed his hair, and the entreaties of that poor old woman who, being a lamb, formally accused herself of being a wolf, were simultaneously laughable and moving. “Don’t despair,” she added; “don’t be so upset… Our daughter is docile and will return to the right path if, as I don’t think, she has ever strayed even a bit from him. It can be easily remedied. Fortunately, nothing has happened.” Come on, console yourself and forgive me… Hey, Pedro, hug me too… Gómez Urquijo hugged her. “I forgive you,” he said; “you know I can’t harbor any resentment against you; but leave me alone, I need to reflect. ” Balbina Nobos left, and Don Pedro continued sitting motionless, his eyes fixed on his worktable, instinctively looking at a book, Eva; the novel that had placed the keys to life in Mercedes’s hands. Very early the next morning, Gómez Urquijo entered his daughter’s bedroom. Mercedes had just gotten up. The emotions of the previous day, the suffering and lack of sleep, had accentuated the features of her face: her nose was more aquiline, her lips were thinner, her color was more broken, her eyes were brighter and sharper, her hair was blacker, uneven, and willful, covering her forehead with a sloe cap . Upon seeing her father, the young woman quickly rose from the little armchair she was occupying. “I was waiting for you,” she said. “Me? Why?” “Oh!… To hear what you had to say. Don’t you wish to speak with me?” “Yes, indeed.” This somewhat haughty reception had disconcerted Gómez Urquijo, who, throughout the night, had been devising a plan for reconciliation and peace. Mercedes looked at him fixedly, and the expression of her eyes and the firmness of her voice conveyed the self-confidence of one who has adopted an unshakeable resolve. “Last night,” said Don Pedro, sitting down, “I caused you great distress.” “Major distress, yes… enormous distress.” “You too. ” “Yes?” “Naturally! ” “Why? My conscience doesn’t accuse me of anything… I was out in search of a friend… that was all. ” “Putting the matter as you present it,” replied the old man, ” it seems, truly, that I was unjust and rash; but you yourself will recognize that my conduct is supported by many very powerful reasons for excuse.” There was a pause during which Mercedes remained with her arms crossed, probing the old man with her imperturbable, dry, and hard Hebrew eyes . “When I surprised you in the doorway last night,” continued Don Pedro, “my sensitive old man’s heart suffered the shock of an extraordinary emotion. I, my child, was always a simple man, a good man who lived body and soul dedicated to his family and to work; in my existence there are no romantic plots or dramatic incidents, no dangerous journeys, nor anything that makes up the entertaining history of adventurers; My past contains only one drama, a terrifying drama that presides over all the chapters of my life: the tragedy of my artistic struggles, of my fight for glory and for the well-being of those who had linked the tranquility of my future to the uncertainties of my short fortune: first I worked for your mother; when you were born, my efforts tripled, and I continued fighting for her and for you… Yes, Mercedes, for you more than for her… I don’t know what it is about the love of children that steals the passion of a woman from our hearts!… The young woman’s eyes had softened their expression; Gómez Urquijo’s voice resonated calmly, sweet and caressing like a maternal smile. “To you, who are now a woman, and a discreet one at that,” Don Pedro continued, ” I can entrust everything to you. Fifteen or twenty years ago, my home consisted of a wife and a daughter; And since my struggles were still very great and the child very small, I saw no tomorrow, absorbed in the consuming worry that today would not end without shelter and bread. But the years went by and the child grew; the day came when I began to reap the well-deserved reward of my labors, and to enjoy a few hours of reflection, of interior life, and, seeing you, pomegranate, full of grace and touching the golden threshold of early youth, I thought about your future, which was to be the consolation of my old age, and of ensuring you an independent and respectable position. From then on, my daughter , I dedicated myself to saving, to hoarding with the tenacity of a miser the abundant profits that my work already brought me, and all for you!… You will soon understand the enormous amount of affection that a man as unbalanced and wasteful as I must feel before he decides to be economical!… My life, therefore, is an unbroken chain of privations, efforts, and sacrifices; I reserved nothing for myself, it was all for you; my money, my respectability… and I even take pride in the prestigious renown of my surname because you bear it and it is your finest display…
He continued speaking, insisting with astonishing eloquence and vigor on the generous renunciation he always made of himself, and how closely linked she and Doña Balbina were to the history of his struggles and his smallest thoughts. “When I wanted to describe the jealousy of a scorned husband, I tried to transform myself from narrator into protagonist, into victim, and I suggested to myself that your mother could deceive me; and if I wanted to paint the desperation of a father, I tortured myself by imagining that you were already young and that a miserable scoundrel was seducing you… You were, then, my most assiduous collaborators, the models who inspired my finest creations… ” Mercedes listened attentively, curious to know the intimacies of that great artist and to discover the genesis of the books that had caused such a transcendental revolution in his soul. “All this,” added Don Pedro, “will help you understand my outburst last night. I live far from reality, in the deceptive world of artistic fictions, but I live for you and believing that you also live for me…” And suddenly, upon returning to my house, to this house which is my whole illusion, my only concern, you surprise me leaving it to rush out into the street, at night, raining… I ask you: “Where are you going?”… I see you bewildered, I repeat my question and you answer: “To Carmen’s house”… To Carmen’s house!!… Who is this woman who has enough influence to tear you away from the home that I support for you?… He was getting more excited, raising his voice. “When I saw you leave I became enraged, suspecting that this would not be your first escape, and the naturalness of your answer confirmed my suspicion. “I’m going to Carmen’s house!”… You told me with a naive tone that showed you see that woman every day… And besides, it was seven in the evening, the hour of mystery, the hour when innocent youth meet outside the workshops… And I feared you too might keep a date… Speaking thus, Gómez Urquijo fixed his daughter with his inquisitive, powerful, miracle-working eyes; she held his gaze gallantly, but her cheeks colored slightly. “Confess I wasn’t mistaken,” Don Pedro added. “You were mistaken,” Mercedes replied resolutely. “Well, despite your denial, I believe that very close by, perhaps on Mesonero Romanos Street where that… Carmen, who serves as your shield in your affairs, lives, there was a man waiting for you, and that man was Roberto Alcalá. ” Mercedes had recovered her composure and continued to deny it categorically. “You’re mistaken,” he said; “there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, like what you suppose. ” “Do you swear it? ” “I swear it to you. ” “Then why doesn’t Roberto come to see me? ” “I don’t know. ” “Is he, perhaps, Carmen’s boyfriend? ” “I don’t know either. ” “Haven’t you spoken to her about this? ” “No. ” “It’s incredible! ” “Perhaps, but it’s true.” He denied it with such firmness that Gómez Urquijo realized he was disoriented. “You’re wrong to hide the truth from me,” he said; “I am the only man who loves you selflessly, the only one who dreams of you and would give his life to see you happy…” Then, forgetting the long history of his literary polemics, he began to speak plainly of morality, filling his peroration with commonplaces. Marriage is the perfect state of man; a woman was born to live in her home, devoted to the care of her husband and children; The mortification and taming of evil passions ensures purity of spirit; obedience, humility, and self-sacrifice are the true, inexhaustible source of all virtue; nothing should be done secretly that cannot be confessed in public; the charm of the forbidden is the great ruse invented by the vulgar genius of evil to defile the pure of heart… Mercedes seemed to be listening to him attentively, and a disdainful, almost imperceptible smile roamed her thin lips . “And it is you who, having forgotten what you have written, dares to preach all this to me?” she exclaimed. “What are you saying? ” “I say, that on other occasions you have affirmed the opposite of what you maintain now… and I believe that if you made a mistake then it was unconsciously, allowing yourself to be carried away by your temperament, like a true artist who knows how to dissemble; whereas now you are knowingly mistaken, proclaiming useful and good what you always held in little regard.” Hers was an extraordinary prayer, an overwhelming and vibrant cry of youth who want to claim their rights. “You expect me to be docile and humble, and to deny my imagination and kill my desires and ignore my will!… And that’s what you call being good!… To have no understanding, no heart, no imagination, no conscience of one’s own merit; to be a little beast, a poor machine that eats and sleeps and suffers without complaining!… Do you think my aspirations are limited to sorting clothes and breastfeeding the children of the man that chance gives me as a husband?… Is that why you conceived me, to suffer the impertinences of an individual who, by the mere fact of having given me his name, can already “Torment me legally? Oh, Father, Father! Is it possible that you want to employ against me the morality that, according to you yourself, creates the unhappiness of so many women? No, that would be absurd and monstrous!” And she added, uttering a vehement cry of passion, crossing her hands on her chest in a gesture of irresistible supplication, dissolved in tears: “I want to enjoy life, my father, before my illusions die within me! I need to be happy! You, who have reached old age, know, by your own bitter conviction, that youth does not return… I want to be happy!” That was the inspiring cry of Eve and Woman’s Head, the cry that translates that fever of enjoyment that drags so many millions of women towards sin. Don Pedro listened in admiration, overcome by the irrefutable arguments Mercedes presented in defense of the doctrines he propagated in his books, and secretly delighted in receiving the incense of such a gallant peroration. Gómez Urquijo stared at his daughter without blinking, seized by utter stupefaction, as if he had never paid close attention to her. Mercedes had the same character and even the same facial features as her sisters Eva and Matilde. She was the woman he dreamed of, with her curly black hair, her deep-set eyes, her aquiline nose with restless wings, her thin lips, and her mystical, lean, and pale countenance; and then her body, nervous, flexible, with a long waist and powerful hips… The woman, ardent, fickle, simoniacal, who believes and doubts and dreams of fantastic journeys and love affairs; the woman who goes from here to there, according to the oscillations of whim, always running towards the unknown, like an insatiable butterfly in love with mystery, and who crosses the world laughing and singing, drunk with joy, lavishing her charms, like a bacchante who, by mistake of Destiny, had been born in the West, many centuries after the last songs sung in praise of the playful deities of Gentileism had been extinguished… Mercedes continued talking, gallantly defending herself with the arguments she learned from her father’s books, stifling Gómez Urquijo who, turned into a self-critic, attacked her lukewarmly. Mercedes was irresistible; Don Pedro beat a retreat, bewildered, fleeing before that daughter, a devastating offspring of his flesh and his imagination. “Oh my father!” exclaimed the young woman; Is it credible that you, the author of so many women like me, don’t understand me? You have said that life is a novel that is written… Don’t be cruel! Let me write the novel of my life as I please… Talking, talking, carried away by the fire of her inspiration, Mercedes opened her soul. She loved everything: the rural scenes, with their springtime dawns, silhouetted against a purple sky by the emerald tops of the dew-covered trees; their meadows dotted with fragrant flowers; their mysterious thickets inhabited by nightingales trilling in greeting the appearance of the evening star; and their brooks running between a double row of cattails and rushes, reflecting the light of the stars on their trembling surface and caressing the banks with a soft, soporific glug; and she also loved the feverish existence of those populous cities that demand continual expenditures of energy from individuals and where one ages very quickly; Madrid, Paris, London… with their balls, their theaters, their racetracks, and their fortune-devouring casinos; those modern towns, great for their industries, their culture, and their vices, where courtesans go in the evenings by carriage to fetch the lucrative loan sharks coming out of the Stock Exchange; who have capitalists who put a fortune on a horse’s tail, and princes who commit suicide for dancing girls, and hetares who have devoured millions; gigantic towns that, seen from afar, appear to the eye of the imagination as something phantasmagorical, incongruous, absurd, like a nightmare… Mercedes dreamed of these multiple and variegated phases of life, and He wanted them in an intuitive way, infinitely more tempting and dangerous than personal and direct knowledge of reality itself. “All that,” Don Pedro replied in a grave voice, “is literature… unhealthy literature. I want you to be good. ” “Me too. ” “Honest. ” “So what? ” “Faithful, clean, industrious, and blameless, like your mother has been. ” “Like my mother!” His accent was insulting; Gómez Urquijo looked at her terribly. “No one knows better than you,” the young woman added, “that my poor mother is a vulgar woman. I’m not like that… I can’t be!… I have your blood in me!” There was a pause. “It doesn’t matter,” Don Pedro replied, defeated; “try to imitate her; virtue is never vulgar. Otherwise, I will be capable of resorting to the harshest means to punish you: confinement, exile… ” “And my happiness? ” “Madwoman!… Seek it in a peaceful middle ground.” The women in my books could only have been faithful and happy by marrying men like me, superior… And it’s very difficult to find men like that!… “I need to be happy,” the young woman repeated stubbornly, “I need it before I grow old… Don’t forget that!” Gómez Urquijo crossed his arms, mute, not knowing what to argue against that implacable thirst for pleasure. When Don Pedro left the bedroom, Mercedes was very proud, convinced that she had completely defeated her father. After that conversation, Mercedes never went out alone again: her mother accompanied her to the Conservatory, then came to get her, and she was so diligent and vigilant that she even stole her opportunities to be with her friends. At first, the young woman tried to rebel and break away from such odious guardianship, but her efforts were in vain, because Doña Balbina had the support of Gómez Urquijo, and that protection authorized and strengthened her. “It’s not me who’s doing this,” she would exclaim when her tender maternal heart could no longer resist Mercedes’s insinuating entreaties. “It’s your father… your father commands and disposes; my mission is reduced to blindly obeying him… You speak to him; I don’t dare…” Then, taking pity on such strictness, she would add: “Old people are afflicted with manias, and your father has his own. This will pass: be patient… For now, we must be content. If he knew I’d left you alone for a moment, he’d have killed me. Ah, how furious he was when he caught you going to Carmen’s house!… What he said to me!… I’ve never seen him like that. I thought he was hitting me…” Mercedes finally resigned herself to her fate; she spent her days clutching her hands, with no desire to laugh or cry, plunged into a stupefying melancholy. When she went to the Conservatory, leaning on her mother’s arm , she walked slowly, her eyes fixed on the ground, certain that her convalescent movements, slow, lazy, and weak, would not attract the attention of men, and that it was good that she looked at any of them. In a few weeks, she lost her taste for anything that required any effort; she neither sewed nor embroidered; housework inspired horror in her, books bored her, and Chopin’s nocturnes lay forgotten, gathering dust on the open piano stand. She was always cold, longing to sit where there was little light, to curl up in her shawl and sleep. It seemed as if all hope of redemption had died in her; she was a sick little bird, a poor defeated woman giving herself up… Balbina Nobos drew Don Pedro’s attention to this, but the old man ignored her. “That,” he said, “is an acute crisis of sentimentality and bad breeding, which will disappear with the first dawns of spring.” Follow my advice: it is best to treat girls, depending on the circumstances, with a certain rigor… The month of November was ending and winter arrived, with its storms of hail and snow and its horrible afternoons full of fog. Sometimes , after school, Carmen and Nicasia Vallejo, with Doña Balbina’s consent, flouted Gómez Urquijo’s orders, which had prohibited These visits were strictly at Mercedes’s house, and these were the only times the young woman chatted and laughed. Carmen and her sister usually arrived in the afternoon, when they were most likely not to run into Don Pedro; Mercedes, who was already waiting for them, would go out to greet them, and the three of them would rush into the study, pushing and shoving, proud of overcoming the wishes of the head of the house. Afterward, they would begin to chat by the fireplace, whispering funny little secrets before laughing out loud, pinching each other, spanking each other, playing around like birds grooming themselves in a ray of sunlight. Taking advantage of the moments when Doña Balbina left them alone, Mercedes and her friends would talk about Roberto. “Have you seen him?” “Yes. ” “When? ” “This afternoon, going to the Conservatory. ” “What does he say? ” “That he loves you very much; difficulties spur his affection, and he’s crazy about your bits. ” “How is he?” “Very well; as pleasant and as green-hearted as ever.” And Carmen would add, taking a letter from her pocket: “Here: this is what he gave me for you…” Mercedes would quickly put the note away and hand another to her friend, and in this way, thanks to the philanthropic intermediation of the future actress, the two lovers continued to communicate assiduously. These letters had an extraordinary influence on Mercedes: if they were sad, her dejection increased and she was overcome by peremptory desires to die; if they were happy, her heart opened to the hope that her ills would find a speedy and most fortunate remedy; But she suffered greatly if the letters were ardent and in them Roberto evoked the sweet memories of their courtship: the handshakes, the oaths, the intimate emotions he felt when she looked at him, burning him in the fire of her eyes, the kisses furtively buried beneath the wild curls of her perfumed neck… and he reinforced each of these evocations with a “do you remember?”… bewitching, desperate. In those last weeks, the actor’s excitement had increased. “I absolutely need to see you,” he would say; “I can’t live without you…” Mercedes would reply, trying to calm him, advising him to have good sense and hope that better times would soon arrive for them . These reasons, however, were insufficient: Roberto grew impatient; he didn’t want to wait any longer . “If you don’t come out to see me,” he would say, “I’ll come to your house; I don’t care about your father’s anger . Keep my wish in mind and act accordingly; You know that obstacles do not intimidate me and that to reach you I am capable of committing the most dangerous folly. Mercedes, not knowing how to avoid such a grave commitment, consulted Carmen Vallejo. “I cannot go out,” she said, “and, on the other hand, I do not want her to come; my father’s temper is very violent, and nothing good would come of any conversation Roberto had with him. Therefore, the best thing is to invent a pretext that will force my mother to leave, and keep her away from the house for two or three hours… During that time Roberto and I could see each other… “Where? ” “Oh, anywhere!” “The difficult thing,” Carmen murmured thoughtfully, “is getting Doña Balbina out of here.” The two young women remained silent, meditating. Mercedes exclaimed: “I have an idea, a novelistic invention that will surely yield excellent results. ” And he added, after a moment of hesitation, during which he tried to define and coordinate his thoughts: “This very night you can write an anonymous note to Doña Balbina Nobos, telling her that a certain person who knows her very well and is looking out for her peace of mind and my future, is expecting her tomorrow, at four in the afternoon, in a very distant place… the church of Antón Martín, for example… to confide in her revelations of great interest. This way, if my mother falls into the trap, while she goes and waits for the author of the note and returns, more than two hours will pass… ” “The worst thing would be if I told your father. ” “No, there’s no problem; the case is too serious for him to do anything without Before speaking to me: I know her very well. “What if she doesn’t take the bait?” Carmen interrupted. “Old women are very cunning. ” “Anything’s possible, but I don’t believe it. That also depends on how much interest you know how to give to the anonymous letter. Write as much as you like and slip between the lines something very suggestive, very alarming: say that Roberto comes to sing me a thousand sweet nothings at night through the peephole in the door; or that one afternoon we were seen in a certain suspicious place and that there’s an old woman protecting us… Tell whatever you like, as long as it’s very plausible. That pretext is the best we can invent, because when it comes to my mother, her fingers seem like guests and she always walks around with her beard hanging over her shoulder, believing that any day now, as in the Arab tales, I’m going to disappear down the chimney in the arms of a flying knight. Carmen Vallejo went through it all. “Fine,” she said, “I’ll do it as you wish, though not with the haste you suppose. First, I must see my cousin and explain our plan to him, so that he, in turn, can determine the day, hour, and place where you are to meet. ” That night, Mercedes went to bed happy, rocked by the hope that very soon Roberto and she, despite the obstacles that separated them, would be able to embrace. The next day, she learned from Carmen that everything was arranged. “I just saw him,” the young woman murmured. “He was waiting for me with Luis outside the Conservatory. He says he’ll be expecting you the day after tomorrow, at four in the afternoon, at the Café de la Universidad.” The news was so grand, so beyond all loftiness, that Mercedes didn’t quite understand. “Let’s see,” she said, “tell me that again, it’s very nice…” Doña Balbina was bustling around the inner rooms, and Carmen was able to satisfy her friend’s doubts. “The University Café,” she said, “is on San Bernardo Street and has a small door on the Pozas crossing, which is where you should enter. My cousin is waiting in a small room to the right of the billiard rooms: it’s a very dark, very cute little corner, where Luis has taken me a few times. And, speaking of my boyfriend: he’s given me his regards for you, for “the prisoner,” as he calls it. ” Mercedes smiled, moved and satisfied that people out in the world hadn’t forgotten her. “So,” she said, “you’ll write the anonymous note today?” “Today, yes, as soon as I get home; and tonight I’ll post it . ” Mercedes’s eyes were brimming with tears. Carmen Vallejo exclaimed: “You see, silly girl, how with ingenuity and perseverance there’s no difficulty that can’t be overcome?… Everything that happens to us is very interesting, very amusing; something that will be recounted in a few years: be patient.” She believes that those who reached old age without doing anything notable did not deserve the honor of being born. The next day, shortly before lunch, the mail brought a letter for Doña Balbina Nobos. This was extraordinary; the old woman never received correspondence from anywhere. “Madam,” said Felipa, “here’s this for you…” And she presented her with an envelope. The letter was from the inside. Mercedes, so as not to undermine the positive impression her lie had given her with her presence, had withdrawn… During lunch, the young woman glanced surreptitiously at her mother, who was very absorbed in her thoughts and with red eyes, as if she had been crying. There was no doubt that the anonymous letter had had an effect. At the usual time, Gómez Urquijo left; Doña Balbina sat in the dining room for a long time, sitting in front of her cup of coffee; then she went into her bedroom. Mercedes, who was in the living room distracting her impatience with Waldteufel’s waltzes, heard her pacing back and forth between her rooms, muttering to herself and opening and closing the wardrobe where she kept her clothes. Moments later, she appeared modestly dressed, wearing a simple veil over her face. “See you later,” she said. Mercedes turned to her mother, admiring her astonishing naturalness. “Where are you going? ” “To see a friend.” “Who?” “This one, madam… you don’t know her… I heard she’s ill…” She stammered; her naive nature was resistant to pretense. The young woman, meanwhile, tried to think of something very sad so as not to laugh. “Felipa is coming with me,” added Doña Balbina, “just don’t go out, because I’ll be back soon; before half an hour…” It was almost four o’clock: Mercedes understood that her mother was exaggerating the promptness of her return and that if Carmen had summoned her, as they had agreed, to Antón Martín’s church, Doña Balbina wouldn’t be able to return before six. Nevertheless, in response to her mother’s recommendation, she affected a very contrite, very indifferent air: “Where do you want me to go?” she murmured. As soon as Balbina Nobos and Felipa left, the young woman ran to her room and began to dress with the speed of an actress who has just received her second call from the stage manager. The petticoats, the skirt, the coat, everything haphazard; the boots undone, the corset loose, the bodice open, revealing the lace of her chemise; she carried her little hat in her hand and quickly put it on as she passed in front of a mirror; and without wasting a moment, she left, slamming the door , putting the key in her pocket, and headed down the stairs, gathering her skirts with one hand, fussing with the other with the loosely fastened hooks. When she reached the street, she looked around, making sure no one was spying on her, and satisfied with her examination, she resolutely headed for Andrés Borrego Street, along which she went as far as Desengaño Street. She walked quickly, her eyes fixed on the ground, trying to go unnoticed. With these jolts, she crossed in front of San Martín Street, followed Luna Street , and continued along San Roque Street toward Pez Street. It was a cold, dreary, drizzly day; One of those days when the people of Madrid walk very slowly, stopping in front of every shop window, noticing every woman, holding open umbrellas, in vain, trying to protect themselves from a drizzle that, so subtle, seems like fog, a dense fog that soaks like a downpour, and when the eaves of the roofs cut out large swathes of a leaden sky over the damp streets, uniform, like an ash vault. Mercedes moved quickly, unaware that her feet were wet and her skirts were spattered with mud. Upon reaching Calle del Pez, she had to take refuge in a doorway, waiting for a friend of Don Pedro’s to pass by; Then she resumed her walk, hiding her face with a handkerchief, always fearing some unpleasant encounter, and continued along Pozas Street, thinking that a singer had been murdered there, the crime she had heard reported on the last afternoon she spoke with Roberto… Upon entering the Café de la Universidad, Mercedes had a moment of indecision, suspecting the mystery of that place she didn’t know. Slowly, her dazzled eyes were getting used to the darkness. She was in a sort of reception area bordered by wooden partitions that were approximately two meters high. In front of her, she saw a small door, to the right another, in whose leaves were two frosted glass ovals. To the left, and down a few steps, was the café: a vast rectangular room, with its piano in the center and its long rows of tables, timidly hinting at it under the melancholy glow that penetrated through some barred windows. Mercedes remained motionless, remembering the directions Carmen had given her. A waiter approached, asking, “Are you looking for a gentleman?” The young woman felt a surge of blood flow back to her eyes. “Yes,” she stammered, “he said he was waiting here… I don’t know if he’s come or if he ‘s gone. ” Then the waiter opened the small door on the right, exclaiming with an indifferent air, “Come in. ” Mercedes crossed a small rectangular room, along the walls of which were long benches upholstered in red, and tables that outlined their white shapes in the gloom. Walking almost by feeling her way, she approached one of them and sat down. “What do you want?” said the waiter. She paled, remembering that she had no money. “Nothing… I ‘ll wait for that gentleman to come…” The waiter turned on his heel and left without replying; he was a plump, dark-skinned little man with an impassive face and intelligent, affectionate eyes that inspired confidence. Then Mercedes, somewhat calmer, was able to take in the appearance of the little room she was in: it was a room that, even if it had been built on purpose, could not have offered better conditions of isolation, security, and mystery: the floor was made of planks; an uneven, dirty floor, surely traversed by many generations of clandestine lovers; in the center of the room there was a kind of column supporting a ceiling blackened by smoke and dust, and to the left a small window cast a stream of sad, cold light into the room. The young woman remained motionless, her hands in the pockets of her coat, wondering why she had been left so alone; and her nervous body began to feel the penetrating dampness of that deserted place. The rest of the café was deserted, silent, with the soporific stillness of a provincial establishment. Time passed, and Mercedes grew impatient, fearing that Roberto wouldn’t come. The university clock , an old clock with a very sad bell, struck four-thirty… The young woman continued absorbed in her thoughts, threading the most childish thoughts with the most transcendental matters ; she thought that her mother was already bored to death on some pew in Antón Martín Church, and that in that place where she was, so unhealthy and so sad, there must be many spiders: large, black, flexible-legged spiders , the kind that thrive in the dampness of dark places… Suddenly Mercedes turned her head, looking at the window, where the silhouette of a man had just passed; then she heard the café door being violently opened, and almost at the same time, Roberto appeared. Mercedes stood up, the actor ran toward her, and they embraced tightly, unable to speak, with a real passion in which flesh played no part. Roberto kissed the back of her neck, intoxicated by the soft scent of those perfumed curls, murmuring: “At last, at last!” She abandoned herself in his arms, trembling, lost, feeling tears running down her cheeks like hot coals. Then they went to sit in the darkest corner of the small room, so that the column hid the door from them. The waiter who had just served them coffee asked distractedly, as if by mere formula: “Do you want me to light the gas?” “No,” replied Alcalá; “I’ll let you know.” The waiter left, smiling with a bored, sad chuckle, remembering that all lovers answered the same. “At last,” Roberto repeated, “at last we’re together!” She looked at him intently through her tears, wanting to air and strengthen her memories with his image. “You’ve suffered so much,” she said; “ungrateful, ungrateful! How could you live so many weeks without seeing me? The last time we spoke, we parted, quarreling; do you remember?” “Yes.
” “How I cried! Carmen, the poor thing, consoled me: she is very generous, very noble… an excellent friend whom we should love very much.” While she spoke, she unconsciously pressed the actor’s vigorous hands between hers . Roberto gently drew the head of the much-desired one onto his shoulder and began to kiss her forehead and those lips that spoke so tenderly to him and those eyelids that had wept so much for him… “Together the two of us,” he repeated, “once again…” In her eagerness to say everything, Mercedes chattered a lot of nonsense; He recounted at length how his mother had gone out, confident in the authenticity of the anonymous letter, and how she had dressed in a jiffy. “When I came in here,” he added, laughing, “I remembered I had no money… Son, what a rush!” Then, with sudden rapture, he exclaimed: “You know that I must be home at a quarter to six, or earlier !… Let me know when I must leave, because I’m crazy…” Roberto didn’t reply. He continued caressing the soft little hands of the Desired One, kissing her eyelids, inhaling her breath, lulling himself to the amorous mist of her clothes, enslaved by the mysterious spell of that young flesh not yet possessed. The coffee steamed and cooled in the glasses. “Do you love me? ” “With all my soul… ” “Ah, Roberto… my Roberto… don’t ever leave me!” The university clock struck five; five sad, plaintive chimes that echoed timidly in the corners of the dark little room, warning the lovers that the sinister moment of separation would arrive very soon. Then the actor seemed to shake off his sweet drowsiness. “Let’s seize the moment,” he said, “by talking seriously.” Quickly, with the skill, clarity, and conciseness of one who has well studied what he is going to say, he outlined the history of their love and the desperate situation in which they both found themselves. She enumerated the troubles that bristled her days, the suspicions and fears that had long alarmed her parents’ curiosity, and the serious argument she had had with Don Pedro. “They’ll separate us!” she added; “they’ll separate us… and it won’t be long! ” “I know… I know… ” “And you,” she added, “are responsible for everything that is happening. ” “Me?”
“You yourself. Remember our last conversation, my entreaties… your refusals… Oh, I swear that that afternoon I suffered greatly and that I left you determined never to return!” She huddled against him, shivering with emotion and cold, happy to be at his side. Robert continued: “These interviews, which, because they are only achieved by overcoming very serious obstacles, cannot be easily repeated, are horrible, because they exasperate our legitimate desire to communicate at all hours… Consider how time flies, how soon the cruel moment of separation will arrive… What will become of us, then? What new tricks will we resort to in order to see each other? ” “Yes… you are right!” Her eyes filled with tears. Robert continued, caressing her as he spoke. “If you were to speak to my father… telling him the truth… the whole truth,” she exclaimed. “Oh! Your father is very proud; besides, he will be justly irritated with me for the underhanded conduct I followed in this matter, and his answer would be negative. ” “That’s true!” She too was repugnant to that procedure, which had something of confession and supplication about it; On the other hand, his revolutionary genius, faced with all legality, experienced that unease that unbalanced spirits suffer on wide and perfectly straight paths. “Love me very much, place your trust in me, abandon yourself to my advice…” the actor murmured. He said it very softly, in her ear, as if not to frighten her, and brushing her rosy skin with his burning lips. Mercedes trembled, gauging the perverse extent of those insidious tricks. “As I told you on the memorable afternoon of our quarrel,” Alcalá added, ” I need to receive a very great proof of your love. ” “Very great… Oh! If it were only very great, I would give it to you… But you demand the impossible of me.” “Impossible!… A hateful word that true lovers have erased with their madness from the holy dictionary of passions…” Mercedes stared at him, wide-eyed, drawn to that abyss at the bottom of which the gnomes of temptation sing with irresistible siren voices. Suddenly she recovered. “Never, that… will never happen!… Everything forbids me: my duty, my decorum, my name… ah, I cannot so infamously sully my father’s name!” Roberto Alcalá replied in his gentle voice, that fascinating voice he knew so skillfully how to modulate at the great dramatic moments. “Isn’t it true that you love me?” ” Yes; I love you more than anyone!” –That is your mistake… You love yourself more than me, for you cruelly sacrifice me to your desire and your duty… Two concepts that tyrannize your spirit, that are your true lovers, the true lords of your will… They govern your soul and your body; you only grant me what they allow you to give me… And it is necessary that something irremediable happen between us… that unites us forever in defiance of men and the law. –I don’t want… I don’t want to hear… You drive me crazy! They talked for a long time, settling the eternal question toward which the illusions and desires of all lovers converge: Roberto reasoned slowly, displaying the serene confidence of the strong; Mercedes responded in monosyllables, thinking that her defeat was something inevitable, that sooner or later had to come. “Why is it that men,” she murmured, “can only love like this?” “Because love that does not desire is an incomplete and deformed passion: it is friendship, it is sympathy… everything!… except true love. Distrust affections, for crime frightens!” Suddenly she stood up; the university clock had just struck five-thirty. “How awful!” she exclaimed. “I’m leaving.” “No, don’t go yet… wait… ” “Impossible! I need to get home before my mother.” The actor had stood up, opening his arms, and the young woman threw herself into them. “Goodbye, Roberto, goodbye… don’t forget me…” He kissed her tenderly; she, overcome by her passion and the sad solemnity of that farewell, kissed him back. “Goodbye,” she said, “write to me, console me by assuring me that this interview will not be the last.” “And you’re leaving like this, without promising me what I so desire?” She tried to break away; he held her by the arm; thus, struggling, they reached the door. There he held her again against his passionate breast, kissing her on the nape of her neck, behind her ears, above her eyelids… Mercedes was fainting. “Oh, let me!” “Do you consent? ” “It can’t be. ” “Never? ” “No!… Never! ” “Why? ” “Because… Who knows! There’s no chance. ” She said it thoughtlessly, so as not to upset him with a flat refusal. “It doesn’t matter,” replied the actor; “I’ll look for her. Now speak… Mercedes, is what you say true?… Aren’t you deceiving me?” Her eyes flashed with happiness, and desire, that all-powerful desire that kneaded the bowels of the globe with human flesh, agitated her lips convulsively. The Much Desired One, trembling with fear, fled from the room, and Roberto, who was holding her by the arm, followed her almost at arm’s length. In the street they said goodbye. “Go in peace,” said Alcalá, “we’ll see each other soon; I’ll invent a way… I don’t know which one… just one!… Goodbye. ” “Goodbye, yes… don’t forget me.” They remained for a few moments, perplexed, looking into each other’s eyes, pressing each other’s hands until they hurt. Then they separated, suddenly, to shorten the duration of that martyrdom. “Remember me, what you promised me…” murmured Roberto. “Yes, yes… goodbye…” And she left, satisfied to leave him happy, but certain that the terrible occasion in which the actor could demand that she fulfill his promise would never arrive. Shortly after Mercedes returned home, Doña Balbina arrived; She seemed very tired and very sad, and that night the young woman heard her mother get up several times, no doubt intending to catch her talking to Roberto through the peephole in the stairwell. It was, therefore, undeniable that Balbina Nobos, despite the disappointment suffered at the church of Antón Martín, continued to believe in the truth of the anonymous letter. Gradually, the memory of that incident faded; Doña Balbina became convinced that the author of the terrible accusatory letter had made a mistake or lied when writing it, and the sweet tranquility of peaceful characters reappeared in her eyes. The days slipped by without emotion: monotonous, tedious, blurred days that fled without leaving any memories. Mercedes went to the Conservatory in the mornings, and some afternoons She received visits from Nicasia and Carmen Vallejo, and the letters Roberto sent her through her cousins; and although her life had not changed, she seemed happier than before, more resigned to her fate, as if she sensed the imminent recovery from all her sorrows. Roberto, meanwhile, wrote to her assiduously, ensuring that his absence would not dampen the fire of love in Mercedes. Some of his letters were very concise, as if to force her to wish, in that studied laconicism, for the arrival of longer and sweeter ones; sometimes he struck the passionate chord of oaths, embroidering a future of pleasures without numbers: he would retire from the theater to be more free, and they would always be together, living, despite marriage, the incongruous and unequal existence of concubines; Other times he would pluck the voluptuous plectrum of memories, telling her of his past, of his now- distant joys, of his quarrels forgotten with kisses, of his nocturnal walks through Madrid; the bustling Madrid of seven in the evening, with its street corners invaded by amorous workers and students greeting each other… And he always concluded by recommending that she not forget him and rest assured that they would soon be reunited. One afternoon Carmen Vallejo arrived at Mercedes’s house earlier than usual; her face was smiling and her eyes had the cheerful, joyful expression of someone bearing good news. Balbina Nobos came out to greet her, and Carmen greeted her and kissed her with unusual passion. “Doña Balbina,” said the young woman, “I have come on behalf of my mother and Nicasia, to ask a favor of you. ” “From me?” replied the old woman; and his face revealed the admiration of one who had never believed himself invested with any power. “Yes, ma’am, yours…” “You say so. ” “That you let Mercedes go to the theater tomorrow, Sunday afternoon.” Doña Balbina paled, then her cheeks colored deeply, revealing that terrible internal struggle experienced by the weak when forced to respond negatively to what is asked of them. “That’s impossible,” she replied, lowering her eyes. “You know it: neither Pedro nor I want Mercedes to go anywhere alone… ” Carmen Vallejo interrupted her: “But she wouldn’t go out alone… would you come with her?” “Oh, that’s different!” “Come on, my mother, Nicasia, you, Mercedes, and I…” “If that’s the case, there’s no problem… Mercedes will decide.” The young woman, who glimpsed Roberto’s hand in all this, accepted the idea with enthusiasm. “Which theater shall we go to?” she asked. “To the Zarzuela. They’re performing Marina.” Mariano Cortés gave us the tickets . Do you know him?… “No.” “A young journalist, a friend of ours. He gave us five tickets, there were two left, and we remembered you…” She spoke quickly, with the fickleness of someone under the influence of great emotion. “Won’t you sit down?” Mercedes asked. “No, I’m going home. I have a lot of studying and sewing to do… you see what I’ve got; my everyday dress… Oh, boring.” Balbina Nobos, very pleased with the satisfactory outcome of that incident, smiled, trying to erase the displeasure her previous refusal had caused the young woman. “You’ll excuse me,” she said; “but since Pedro is like that… he has a temper… I deplore… ” “Shut up, Doña Balbina, what you say is perfectly reasonable. All mothers, in your place, would do the same.” Mercedes and her mother accompanied Carmen to the reception. “The performance,” said the young woman, “starts at half past four: we ‘ll come for you at four. ” “Here?” asked Mercedes. “Here or somewhere else. ” “My daughter is right,” replied the old woman; “it would be preferable if we met in the street… Pedro, do you understand?… he’s like that, so capricious… The smallest thing bothers him…” And she added: “If he knew we had gone to the theater alone and with general admission… he would kill us!” “Then,” said Carmen, “we will meet at four o’clock sharp, at the Pasaje del Comercio, which is a little-traveled place. ” “Good. ” “And if anything unforeseen should prevent you from leaving, please let us know. ” Now that this was agreed upon, they separated. When Mercedes and her mother returned to the study, Doña Balbina exclaimed: “I believe I did the right thing by accepting Carmen’s invitation; really, there was no reason to refuse it… However, I am afraid to tell your father; since what we already know has happened… what do you think? ” “That you should not tell him anything,” replied Mercedes resolutely. “Papa is very strange; depending on the state of his nerves, the project may please him or infuriate him, and I find it humiliating and ridiculous to give up a pleasant afternoon to obey a stupid whim. Is what we are going to do reprehensible? No: then let us act in accordance with what, in our judgment, is legal and discreet.” “Well, well,” the old woman replied thoughtfully, “we won’t say anything.” However, her character, refractory to dissimulation, weak and accustomed to obedience over thirty years of marriage, meant she couldn’t accept responsibility for any decision: the unknown filled her with horror. She feared there might be a fire in the theater, or that a car would run her over as she was leaving the show, or that some other unfortunate accident might occur by which Don Pedro would find out that she had gone ahead and done something without first asking his opinion and advice. This seemed unforgivable to her, and as time passed, the gnawing at her conscience grew crueler and her need to confess to Gómez Urquijo everything she had thought and planned more pressing. During dinner, Doña Balbina, although she managed to restrain herself with great difficulty, Mercedes watched her uneasily, and she avoided her gaze, understanding that her crime was all the greater the longer she delayed in discovering it. After eating, Mercedes retired to her room, and Gómez Urquijo and Doña Balbina to the study. Don Pedro read some newspapers and then began to write. The old woman watched him from a corner, not knowing how to manage to get rid of what she had been carrying so hard. Suddenly she dared:
“I’m sleepy,” she said; “I’m going to sleep… See you tomorrow… ” “Goodbye,” replied Don Pedro without raising his eyes. When she reached the door, Balbina Nobos stopped and retraced her steps, exclaiming with a naive air: “Ah, I forgot what was most on my mind!… Do you know, Pedro, that tomorrow afternoon Merceditas and I will go to the Zarzuela?… We’ve been invited.” Gómez Urquijo raised his powerful head and looked at the old woman with penetrating eyes. The memory of Roberto Alcalá had flashed across his forehead. “Who?” he said. Balbina Nobos understood that if she didn’t disguise the truth, Don Pedro wouldn’t grant her the desired permission, and she replied gently: “Doña Inés, Carmen Vallejo’s mother, invited me. Today, when I went out to buy some braids I needed, I ran into her. We chatted nonsense, she gave me many greetings for you, and she told me that she had been given five tickets to the Zarzuela… and if I wanted to go. I think they’re performing Marina. Her invitation was so spontaneous that I accepted. ” “Who’s going? ” “She and her two daughters, Mercedes and I. ” “I don’t like that family. ” “Nor do I… But since it’s only a matter of going to the theater… What do you think?” “Well,” replied Don Pedro, “that you go…” And he continued writing, carried away by the vertigo of his conception, facilitating the fatal designs of Destiny with his artist’s distractions. The next day, Sunday, at four in the afternoon, Mercedes and her mother arrived at the Pasaje del Comercio almost at the same time as Doña Inés and her daughters. “If I were you,” said Nicasia, “we would have been wandering the streets an hour ago, but, impossible… My mother, despite her age, takes longer to dress up than a flirt.” Doña Inés smiled: she was a woman of medium height, very plump, with Blue eyes that must have been beautiful and that once looked with difficulty from under their drooping eyelids, and a flabby face, withered by boredom. Then the five women began walking down the slope of Calle Montera: the two old women trailed behind; the Vallejo sisters walked in front, carrying Mercedes in their midst. “What do you think of this?” Carmen asked in a very low voice. “So far,” Mercedes replied, “it seems fine to me, but I don’t understand it. ” “You’ll like it more when you do. ” “And Roberto? ” “Waiting for us. ” “Where? ” “At the Zarzuela. He, who, according to the inventiveness he’s showing, seems like a writer of serial novels, is the sole author of this mess, of which Nicasia and I are simply perpetrators… ” Nicasia laughed aloud; her sister sternly ordered her to lower her voice. “Don’t be stupid,” she said, “the slightest indiscretion could ruin all our calculations.” And she added, turning to Mercedes: “My cousin, not that Mariano Cortés I mentioned earlier, is the one who gave me the tickets for this afternoon’s performance. Of the five, look carefully!… three are for the main amphitheater and two for the stalls. I didn’t tell Doña Balbina so as not to alarm her… My cousin’s plan is for our mothers and one of us to occupy the seats in the main amphitheater, and you and I, for example, those in the stalls. In this way, during the intervals, the five of us will be together, but as soon as the performance begins, since they can’t see us, I ‘ll stay in my seat, and you and Roberto can go and chat wherever you see fit.” “As long as you return to my side before the curtain falls, so that the plot isn’t revealed… ” Mercedes had become a little sad. “That’s all very nice,” she said, “but the outcome is not certain; because if my mother doesn’t want to leave me… ” “Nothing is inevitable, but I have very real hopes that I’m not wrong. Your mother and mine understand each other perfectly and chat, without getting bored, about their ailments and “their times…” Besides, I will show a desire to be with you; if I detect any repugnance in her , I will insist, I will beg, and you know that Doña Balbina doesn’t know how to refuse any favor. I also have evidence that my mother, innocently, will help us; and, ultimately, if yours persists in pursuing you during the first act, she may change her mind in the second or third… Four women asking for the same thing is very annoying.” When they arrived at the Zarzuela, the doors of the coliseum were already open, and the large, motley, and noisy audience that flocks to the theater on Sunday afternoons was pouring in. The three young women stopped, waiting for their mothers to approach. “Who has the tickets?” asked Doña Inés. “Me,” replied Carmen, “follow me.” They entered, pushing their way through the crowd. Upon reaching the vestibule, Carmen stopped. “I warn you,” she said, “that our seats are not together: three are in the main amphitheater and two in the stalls. ” Balbina Nobos didn’t quite understand, seized by the dizziness that overwhelms timid souls when they enter a public place. Carmen had to repeat the names and the seating arrangements. “So, how are we going to divide up?” asked her mother. “Very easily: you, Doña Balbina, and Nicasia, for example, have the main seats, and Mercedes and I have the stalls. ” The audience, which continued to enter, pushed them from one side to the other, bruising them, preventing them from speaking. “I’m so sorry we’re separated!” said Doña Balbina. ” That’s true; but we’ll be together during the intervals.” I had warned of this inconvenience, but since the tickets were a courtesy, I didn’t want to say anything to the poor boy who gave them to me. And she added, with a nod of expressiveness: “So, shall we go?” They all followed her, plunging into the crowd that was climbing the stairs, swaying, twisting on the steps, Like an enormous serpent of human flesh, all the spectators advanced, pushing, grabbing one another, holding each other up, shoulder to shoulder, chest to back, by virtue of an inexplicable balance. The steps trembled under the weight of so many feet, the smoke emitted by the smokers infested the air, the heat was suffocating, exciting, and the men took advantage of the close quarters to pinch the women: some defended themselves by screaming; others abandoned themselves, arching their hips, spontaneously offering themselves to voluptuous martyrdom… And the magnetic, animating feeling of so many bodies seeking each other without knowing each other, squeezing each other, hurting each other, and then going in different directions without retaining any memory of those fleeting unions was imposing. Mercedes brought her lips close to Carmen Vallejo’s ear. “And Roberto?” she asked. “I don’t know, he’s somewhere around here.” “No matter how hard I look, I can’t see him…” When they reached the main amphitheater, Carmen handed her mother the three tickets for their seats. “Now,” she said, “Mercedes and I are going to the stalls.” Doña Balbina tried to stop them. “Wait, it’s still early. ” “Don’t believe it, they’ve just sounded the first call.” They had entered the amphitheater and the young woman approached the front. “You see,” she added, “the musicians are already taking their places; this will start shortly. Here, goodbye… ” An usher approached, exclaiming: “Please make way!” Balbina Nobos understood that she had to give way: the conductor had just sat down in his chair. “Well,” she replied, “you should come back right away… ” “Yes, yes… see you later.” “Be careful leaving the theater!” “Don’t worry.” Carmen ran off, dragging Mercedes along, who hadn’t dared to open her mouth for fear of saying something candid that would upset the Machiavellian plot of the whole plan. When the two young women reached the aisle, they found Roberto. He was very pale, with the restless, bewildered eyes of a fighter who is winning, but who still doubts victory. “Everything has gone perfectly!” said Carmen; and she added, pointing at Mercedes with a gesture, “There you are.” ” Thank you,” replied Alcalá, “see you later; we’ll come back for you right away, before the curtain falls.” And he left hurriedly, taking Mercedes by the arm, afraid of losing her again. They crossed the foyer and began to climb the stairs. “Where are we going?” she asked. “You’ll see.” Mercedes instinctively felt a violent shock of terror. They reached the second amphitheater. “At last,” the actor murmured, “and for the first time, we’re going to be alone, completely alone, you and I.” He was dragging her along a dark corridor with a vigorous, threatening arm, like the irresistible arm of fate. “Oh!… But where are you taking me?” exclaimed Mercedes, anguished. “I’m ignorant of everything; Carmen hasn’t told me anything. ” “Naturally!… Because Carmen doesn’t know that I’ve bought a box for you. ” At the back of the alley, a passageway on whose plank floor footsteps echoed fearfully, there was an usher leaning against the wall, reading a newspaper by the light of an electric lamp. Roberto Alcalá approached him, presenting a ticket. “Proscenium box, number…” “Yes, sir; this is it.” And he opened a small door, which the two lovers passed through without pausing, and which the actor then closed from the inside. Mercedes suddenly, hardly understanding how she had gotten there, found herself in a spacious antechamber, a sort of rectangular room, draped in red and lit by an electric spotlight. In front of them, separating them from the hall, was a heavy velvet curtain, through which penetrated the confused murmur of the crowd that had invaded the theater and the chords of the orchestra, which was beginning to play the first bars of the overture; all of this reverberated in the corners of the chaotic antechamber, with A feverish roar. Once the initial shock had passed, Mercedes noticed a few details: the carpet was old; the walls were covered in obscene dates and signs that made her cheeks redden; to one side appeared a tempting, wide, and soft divan. The young woman had the clear intuition that this was her doom. “I can’t be here, I shouldn’t be here,” she murmured, heading for the door; “let’s go. ” Roberto gently restrained her. “Don’t be afraid,” he said, “no ambush. I’ve devised this way so we can chat peacefully. That’s all. ” Mercedes shivered with emotion and cold. “But they can see us… and come. ” “No one can come here, much less enter without our permission.” Then, like someone completely in control of themselves and in no hurry to use extreme caresses, she added: “From the box, which is very deep, we’ll see your mother and my cousins, without any danger of being seen.” Come this way… And he moved aside the side of the curtain closest to the wall. Mercedes obeyed. “See?” said Roberto, extending his arm, “there they are.” “Where?” “There, to the left of the third column, next to the aisle…” A dense crowd invaded the hall: in the amphitheaters there were hundreds of heads staring fixedly at the stage. Mercedes’s eyes darted from one point to another, vaguely searching for the spot indicated by the actor, dizzy with that agglomeration of unfamiliar faces. Then she stifled a small cry; she had just seen… “Yes, yes,” she murmured, “you’re right…” There, indeed, were Balbina Nobos, Doña Inés, and her daughter, enraptured by the spectacle; a smile of satisfaction and joy roamed across their lips, which demonstrated how calm and content they were. It was hot: a suffocating vapor formed by the union of so many people breathing at once rose from the back of the room like a belch; in the boxes, many women gently fanned themselves with their feathered fans; in the amphitheaters, the crowd presented a baroque and garish appearance: hats, berets, blue shawls, capes with yellow, white, and red edging, multicolored scarves… everything was disordered and piled up, like garments displayed in a provincial flea market window. Everywhere, the sound of footsteps and the murmur of whispered conversations resounded, filling the hall with a threatening, swarming hum. The cellos sent their melancholic notes into the air, long and mournful, like moans. On the stage, Marina sang: The sea shines, adorned with its cloak of calm. God has painted its waves the color of hope… “Come,” said Roberto, pushing Mercedes toward the antechamber, ” let’s seize the moment… I love you so much!” Standing beside the divan, deep and soft as a newlywed’s bed, the two lovers embraced tightly, joining their knees and lips. “Roberto… ” “My dear soul! ” Tears filled the young woman’s eyes; the actor, suddenly idiotized by the unexpected possession of such a fulfilled gift, could not speak and continued kissing her eyelids, the nape of her neck, behind her ears… burying his face in the matted, fragrant hair of the much-desired one. They had sat down on the divan: she thoughtful, sad, her eyes fixed on the ground and her hands crossed on her skirt; He was at her side, very close, wrapping his feverish arm around her waist. “So much worry, so much anguish,” sighed Mercedes, “and for what?… to be separated in a moment… ” “Oh, that’s what we’ll be dealing with now,” replied the actor with rapture, “to unite our destinies forever!” He began to speak slowly, in that insinuating, hushed voice that the spirit of artists chooses for their great revelations, and breathing upon the face of the Desired One as if to stun her too with the vicious tickling of his breath… “At last we’re together, and I can tell you what I’ve kept so hidden inside.” her chest… what my letters could never have told you… A sweet anguish, an oriental laxity was taking hold of Mercedes, relaxing the vigor of her muscles and invigorating her faculties; she saw objects surrounded by a misty halo; sounds seemed to reach her spirit from very far away, breaking a reverie. Beside
her, Roberto’s voice whispered softly, like the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings, standing out from the turbulent clamor of voices and music that rose from the stage with deafening sounds of a storm, and from that eternal human murmur that filled the emptiness of the theater with the furious buzz of a beehive. Roberto spoke, discreetly traversing various sentimental moments, and he did so without realizing it, spontaneously, driven by the rapture of his passion, which at such moments was great and loyal. “Do you remember, my love, our first emotions? Ah! Why didn’t those happy days last forever? Why shouldn’t we, you and I, live together eternally, according to our desires? Come closer, Mercedes; closer, closer… much closer… for I feel you very close to me… ” She was fainting, suffocated by the magnet of passion, by that warm atmosphere saturated with perfumes and acrid odors that pierced the curtains of the antechamber, and by the strange sensation of vertigo caused in her soul by the electric lamp shedding its milky light on that sinister red-upholstered corner. Suddenly her nerves vibrated with a hysterical shock, remembering that threadbare carpet, trampled by so many feet, and that divan, as ignoble as a brothel bed, on which, perhaps, many women had surrendered. “Ah! I’m suffocating!” she murmured. “Leave me alone!” She stood up. Roberto Alcalá also stood up. “What? Let you go when it took me so much trouble to bring you here?” In his voice, insinuating and caressing, there was an almost imperceptible hint of anger, a slight, hard, metallic accent that he tried in vain to hide. “Yes, let me,” Mercedes replied. “I’m afraid my mother will surprise us. Let’s go… ” “Later, when the first act is over. Now we needn’t fear any danger, and for your greater safety, look out from the box and see…” Mercedes opened the curtains, receiving a slap of heat and scandal full in the face. There, far away, among a crowd of heads, she saw her mother, Doña Inés, and Nicasia, staring at the stage, transfixed. Then, as if obeying the command of some powerful sorcerer, there was a moment of silence, which precedes interesting musical moments, and in the space vibrated the tenor’s voice… Seeing on the immense plain of the sea… The spirited, vibrant voice of the exile who returns… Mercedes let the curtain fall and went to Roberto, who was waiting for her seated on the couch. The young woman, suddenly seized by an inexplicable emotion, sank down beside him, sobbing. “Oh, such sad notes!” she said; “how much that music hurts me !” That music, which she remembered hearing as a child, awakened in her soul a turbulent surge of memories: it evoked her first sensations, the house where she was born, with its unfurnished rooms, so sad, so poor, and its windows without curtains, from which vast snow-covered plots could be seen, stretching out in gentle undulations under a winter sky; and she saw Mme. Relder, tall, dressed in her topcoat, always arriving at the same time, leaving behind her a strong scent of violets… And she experienced again the musical emotions of that distant time, the libertine waltzes of Waldteufel that have rhymed the mad joy of so many carnival bacchanals; the melodies of Donizetti and Verdi, the two great sorcerers who imprisoned in the stave the grieving, superstitious, and chimerical spirit of the Latin people; and Chopin’s vague, sleepy nocturnes, summarizing the harmonies and mysteries of twilight. Roberto harangued ardently, stirring the nerves of the very Desired. “I need you,” he murmured, “I need your body to go on living… Calm, my life, with your caresses, the fire that your beauty placed in my blood; sweeten, with the honey of your lips, the mortal bitterness of mine… Come; do not defend yourself, come… I desire you!… Come, I thirst for you!… But she did not hear him; she was dreaming… That was the exact repetition of what her father’s books had taught her; Roberto was the man, love itself, who asks and pleads and crawls, offering everything he has to obtain from the woman he loved, the supreme good. Roberto did not lie; his passion flashed in his eyes, trembled feverishly in his hands, trembled in his voice; Roberto was the beloved for whom she had longed for so long, the vague, nondescript man with whom she had unconsciously danced as a child listening to the waltzes of Waldteufel, the gallant who sighed with Donizetti and Verdi, the mysterious lover in whose arms she fell asleep listening to Chopin’s voluptuous nocturnes , laden with crepuscular shadows… And he was also the actor she had seen in the theater embodying the virtuous haughtiness of so many women, and who at that supreme instant was representing in her honor everything she had read and desired; the irresistible lover who dragged Eva and Matilde down the slope of temptation, and whom Gómez Urquijo, the prodigious novelist of sensual loves, taught her to love… Roberto Alcalá continued speaking with increasing rapture. –The years pass, Mercedes of my soul, youth does not return… Do not allow your passion to cry out: “Enough” … when mine repeats “Always, always!”… I want to be happy… Help me!… I want to be happy!… That cry, that love of life suggested by the horror inspired by death, is the eternal cry of humanity renouncing the fateful curse that condemns it to turn gray and succumb, the same feeling that Mercedes had invoked a few months before, arguing with her father, when he wanted to deny her her right to happiness. –I also want to be happy,–exclaimed the young woman,–, to live consecrated to you, to die loving you… it is the inescapable nightmare of all my hours… –Give in, then… come… –No… never. –You promised me. –I know, but… I was crazy… I don’t know what I said… Leave me!… –Then,–replied the actor in a dying voice; wait still… And once again he resumed his speech, that tender, ardent peroration, the sole argument of the eternal poem of all loves. Once again Mercedes felt her strength abandoning her: Roberto was the invincible gallant of all dramas, the irresistible seducer of all novels; the initiator… “I will repay your favors with lavish generosity,” murmured the actor, “driving you mad on my breast by revealing to you the milestone of supreme voluptuousness… Come… Why do you resist if in the end you must belong to me?… A manly voice sang from the stage: Tomorrow you will be mine, you will be my eternal love… That was an irresistible conflagration of temptations; Mercedes ‘s virtue was dying; Roberto continued talking, caressing her, kissing her eyelids, the nape of her neck… The atmosphere in the antechamber became stifling; the young woman was suffocating… The actor took her by the wrists… At that moment, a thunderous storm of applause resounded in the hall, and through the aisles, voices and footsteps of people leaving in droves. The first act was over. Mercedes, abruptly brought back to reality, stood up. “Let’s go,” he said, “let’s go right away, run… my mother is waiting for me. ” “Wait. ” “No… impossible!… You want to lose me!” She ran toward the door, but the actor, seeing the imminent failure of his plans, blocked her way. “I’m not letting you out,” he said, “because if you go out… you won’t come back. ” “Yes, I’ll come back… I promise, I swear.” “No, you won’t come back… and then I’ll have lost you forever.” Mercedes burst into tears, desperate for being so weak. Then she turned to Towards the front of the box, he raised the curtains and looked: a large part of the audience had left, leaving long rows of empty seats; Doña Balbina was not there… The young woman turned to Roberto, looking at him with eyes that shone with the sinister glow of infinite despair. “She’s gone,” she said. “What do you care about anyone?” replied Alcalá; “think of me, of me alone; I must be your love and your king…” She advanced toward the door, he seized her arms, and they began to struggle. “Coward, coward,” repeated the Desired One, “you abuse me…” Struggling, they fell onto the couch, and Roberto, who had not lost his composure for a moment, began to speak again with renewed ardour and tenderness. She listened to him, panting, almost defeated, thinking that novel heroines don’t usually put up such a fight… Gradually, the sound of footsteps coming and going in the aisles of the theater diminished, as the din of conversations and shouts in the hall increased; the doors of some of the boxes were violently closed; the spectators hurried to recover their seats: the second act was about to begin. “The damage is done and irreparable,” said Roberto. “Realize that you have broken with the world forever and that you belong to me. ” “Oh, this is horrible!” “Not as much as you suppose. ” “Yes, it is dreadful! Poor mother; now, believing me lost, she will be crying for me… My mother, my mother!” “Ah! You pity your mother without reason and you do not take pity on me, for I suffer so much.” “She’s old… a poor old woman who expected everything from me…” “And you, a fool, sacrificing the brilliant future of your youth to your mother’s frozen past… ” The theater had suddenly fallen silent: the performance continued. Roberto continued talking, now spiritedly pondering his yearnings for happiness, now melancholically discoursing about the irremediable, about that which cannot be remedied… “Love me, Mercedes,” he repeated, “love me, life is short… ” “And after? ” “After?… Always the same!… The two of us united… you, living for me… me, for you… in an eternal embrace.” She had reclined her head on Alcalá’s shoulder, receiving the actor’s kisses on her half-open red lips… “Love me, my love, since we are crossing the age of dreams and love, of all that is so exquisite and which flees so quickly…” The clear, fresh, vibrant, magnetic voice of the tenor reached them, singing: “Where are you fleeing, illusions!”… Roberto and Mercedes looked at each other with infinite longing, understanding each other, feeling that their souls had just kissed, alienated by the same musical charm. That was the eternal, heart-rending cry of youth that says goodbye. The Much Desired One closed her eyelids… The tenor sang in a voice as aching as a sob: “Drink, drink, home the cry of pain…” And the chorus responded spiritedly: “Drink, drink, drain the glass of liquor…” In all of this there was love, jealousy, withered hopes, spite, tears, something electric that whipped the back, producing a sensation of cold at the roots of the hair… “Come, come,” Roberto murmured, “it is I who calls you…” Mercedes languished, abandoning herself in the actor’s arms; everything conspired against her: the music, the stifling atmosphere of the antechamber, the red paper that covered the walls, the softness of that couch that provoked so many dark defeats… The young woman could find no firm reason to hold on; the books taught her to be fragile; Roberto consummated the monstrous incest that Gómez Urquijo had begun… “I can’t take it anymore!” he murmured. “I can’t take it anymore!” The audience clapped, electrified, demanding a repeat of the last scene. “Come, come…” Roberto repeated. In the hollow of the silent hall, the tenor’s voice resounded again, uttering that enervating, heart-rending cry of youth taking leave: “Where are you fleeing to, illusions…!” And it was… Chapter 5. Mercedes spent that night delirious: her forehead and hands were burning, her lips were dry, and her eyes were bright with fever; seized by a terrible nervous exaltation, she tossed and turned on the bed , uncovering herself, seeking the coolness of the sheets, muttering a crazy monologue that revealed the incoherent hustle and bustle of her mind. “Box… that door… let me… Oh, what a noise, how hot, so many people!… I’m suffocating, I’m suffocating… open the door!” Doña Balbina, sitting in an armchair next to the bed, listened without responding, so as not to increase her excitement, as Gómez Urquijo had advised her. Then, thanks to a few footbaths of boiling water, the sick woman recovered greatly, stopped talking, and moments later was sleeping peacefully. The next morning she woke up feeling fine, surprised at having been heard dreaming aloud. The days passed uniformly, tedious, one erasing the distasteful memory left by the others, bringing back identical, blurred emotions; long, soporific, like the modulations of a single yawn… Balbina Nobos learned nothing of what had happened at the Zarzuela; the doctor attributed Mercedes’s delirium to a cold, and that incident, like so many others, was forgotten. Every morning Mercedes went with her mother to the Conservatory, and in the afternoons she received Carmen Vallejo, who always brought a letter from Roberto; passionate, desperate, terrible letters that burned the fingers. Fifteen days passed. One Saturday afternoon, the eve of Carnival, Doña Balbina was in the dining room, sewing by the window, taking advantage of the last glimmer of dusk. Mercedes was in the study copying a music lesson; Gómez Urquijo and Felipa had gone out; a sad stillness weighed on the silent rooms, with their dark furniture and doors covered by motionless curtains; the rain pounded on the glass, and in the chimney stacks the wind moaned with stentorian wails and the high-pitched snores of a dying giant. Suddenly the house shook, shaken by a violent slam of the door. Balbina Nobos raised her head and listened… The rain, driven by the wind, rattled furiously on the glass; the dining room clock continued impassively, tick-tock, tick-tock… “It won’t be here,” she thought; and she continued sewing. Then, through a mysterious concatenation of thoughts, she remembered Mercedes’s love, her sorrows, the anonymous note that an unknown hand had written promising to reveal some very serious secrets… and once again she was troubled by that slamming door that continued to echo inside her head. Suddenly alarmed, she got up and went to the study: Mercedes wasn’t there: on the table and on the floor, as if thrown in a fit of rage, lay several music papers; the old woman inspected the young woman’s bedroom and went through all the rooms , anxiously repeating: “Niña, niña!”… And she found herself back in the hall, in front of that door that had been so violently closed moments before. “She’s not here…” Balbina murmured. Her timid heart refused to admit the possibility of a great misfortune: her daughter would return… “She’ll have gone to Carmen’s house… ” That was a comforting ray of hope for her, and she happily admitted the same thing that would have displeased her on another occasion. “But how could she not have told me?” she added. She remained motionless in the midst of the reception, trembling before the terrifying mystery of that closed door. It was inconceivable that Mercedes had gone out, exposing herself to being surprised by Gómez Urquijo; names of people and memories of long-forgotten episodes flashed through Balbina Nobos’s mind : Roberto Alcalá, Marina’s performance , and the incoherent words Mercedes uttered during her delirium… “Box, let me, that door…” Suddenly the old woman felt cold, a quartan chill, and afraid of finding herself alone in that house, with its dark furniture and its doors adorned with severe, motionless curtains; afraid of the rain tapping on the glass, of that wailing wind that howled in the chimneys with its agonizing throes, and of that old clock that had struck the hour of her wedding thirty-two years before and that had devoured her life… Balbina Nobos returned to the dining room, sat by the window, and waited. Night had fallen completely; the coal crackled in the kitchen hearth , throwing up sparks that shed fleeting bloody reflections on the polished saucepans … More than an hour passed. Felipa didn’t come, nor did Mercedes. What did that mean? Suddenly, the doorbell rattled. “There she is!” exclaimed Balbina Nobos, thinking of her daughter and running to the reception area. “There she is!” It’s her!… She opened the door. It was Gómez Urquijo. “Are you coming alone?” she said. There were so many tears in her eyes and so much emotion in her voice that Don Pedro had a vague presentiment of something terrible. “Yes, alone…” he replied, “well, who are you waiting for? And Mercedes? ” “She’s not here,” murmured the old woman, fainting. “She’s not here!” repeated Don Pedro, pale. “No; she’s gone out. ” “She’s gone out! ” “Yes… ” “Where? ” “I don’t know. ” “It’s strange!” “Yes… yes… indeed…” And he added, fearing that the old man would become furious: “But… she’ll be back soon… she’ll have gone to Carmen’s house…” They fell silent, trembling under the sudden intuition of some misfortune. “Lie!” Don Pedro suddenly cried. “You know nothing… she hasn’t told you anything, don’t lie!” He had grabbed her by the wrists, dragging her towards the living room. “Where were you?” she repeated. “How did Mercedes get out of here?… Talk! You idiot, you idiot!” She had the unshakeable conviction that Mercedes had run away, and before that brutal blow that fate had brought down on her old age, her face took on the anguished, horrible expression of those stone colossi condemned, by the whim of the architect, to bear an enormous weight on their foreheads. Balbina Nobos recounted everything: she was in the dining room, sewing; suddenly she heard a door slam that seemed to have resonated on the floor below; then she got up and searched the house without finding Mercedes. She knew nothing more… “But… what’s the point of all this?” she exclaimed. “Do you think our daughter… ” “Yes, yes… I believe it… I believe it! ” “Pedro!” “I think our daughter is gone… forever!” She screamed. Gómez Urquijo ran toward the reception room, frantically trying to get out into the street to call for help… But he stopped. “How long ago was that?” he asked. “Oh, quite a while… more than an hour!” “An hour!” He returned to the living room, wringing his arms, tearing at his hair, cursing himself. Then he advanced on his wife with his fist raised, seized by a savage frenzy, slapping her with the same hand that had worked to feed and clothe her for so many years. “Imbecile, imbecile!” he repeated. Then, stunned by the catastrophe that had suddenly destroyed the best hope of his life, he felt that barbaric anger turn against himself. “Oh ambition… torturing chimera of my soul!… Cursed glory that turned my existence into an endless delirium of ephemeral triumphs and countless sorrows!… You took everything from me: youth, rest, future, family… I gave it all for you, you who are smoke; all for nothing!” Balbina Nobos heard him, weeping thread by thread: tears are the favorite language of simple women who don’t know how to speak and feel a lot. Gómez Urquijo continued his tirade: the unfortunate man acknowledged himself to be the main author of that great tragedy; he had corrupted his daughter, he possessed her soul, and that abominable incest was continued by another man… “It was me, it was me!” he repeated. Unconsciously, the two old men, driven by the desire to see the last place Mercedes had been, entered the study. They searched for a ray of light to guide them, perhaps for consolation… On the table, like the nefarious fruit of everything written on it, lay a letter. Doña Balbina let out a scream. Gómez Urquijo tore open the envelope and, going to the window, saw some horrible lines that summarized all the philosophy of her books. “Dear Father…” There was a pause. The letter was addressed to its true author. “I can’t read,” murmured the old man, whose hair seemed whiter. “I’m suffocating; you read…” And Doña Balbina, more curious, read: “Dear Father: Causes for which you are not responsible oblige me to leave your side. Forgive me for the harm I have caused you and try to forget me. I am leaving you as you abandoned my grandparents; It is a cruel law against which it is useless to rebel. Life, you said, is a novel that is written; allow me, therefore, to write mine. I want to take advantage of illusions, youth, all that beautiful stuff that never returns; I want to be happy, my father…! Give my mother a kiss. Goodbye… Barcelona.–April, 1900. Thank you for joining us in this narration of Incesto: original novel by Eduardo Zamacois. We hope the story has left you with profound reflections and feelings. Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel for more stories like this one and leave your comments. Until next time, on Ahora de Cuentos.
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