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Welcome to Now for Stories. Today we present The Date: Novels, a fascinating work by writer Eduardo Zamacois, known for his direct style and his ability to portray human passions and contradictions. In this volume, Zamacois offers us a series of stories that explore the complexities of romantic relationships , the twists and turns of fate, and the subtleties of human character. Each story is a window into the most intense emotions and moral dilemmas of its protagonists. Prepare to immerse yourself in a world where the date can be the beginning of an unforgettable adventure or an unexpected destiny. Chapter 1. After a long, questioning look, full of maternal sympathy, the actress added: “Oh, Ricardo!… Why are you like this? Why not resign yourself and find joy in what you have?” Why do you admire what is foreign, and what is your own, which would make more than one discontented person happy, inspires only boredom and disdain?… He fell silent, and his weak voice, in which there was, along with a desperate yearning for persuasion, the inner certainty of achieving nothing, was as pleading as the gesture of a begging hand. Ricardo Villarroya adopted a more comfortable attitude in the little armchair where he was sitting. He sighed. His strong eyebrows arched sentimentally beneath his high, prominent forehead. “What do you want?” he said. “One is… as one was born. In the midst of our apparent inconsistencies, we are all perennially and fatally slaves to ourselves. The absurd obeys precise laws; the most adventurous, most incongruous, most copious existence in tightrope walks, is orderly like the life of a peasant who never transcends the avaricious horizons of his place. The strange does not exist; The strange, my poor Fuensanta, is the word with which we mask what we don’t know, the frivolous explanation of the hidden concatenations we don’t guess. Everything has its reason; even madmen are, in their own way, discreet; Destiny is a treatise on logic… “Apparently, you’re giving up on the goal of redeeming yourself?” “Completely; I’m incurable.” He had crossed one leg over the other and lowered his head, distractedly taking pleasure in crushing the ash from his cigar against the sole of his patent leather boot; his eyes went out, the corners of his lips drooped without illusion behind the virile lines of his mustache, and an intense expression of melancholy clouded his forehead, prematurely aged by work. He was a man of thirty-five, tall and muscular, whose red hair, closely cropped in a military style, clearly outlined the lines of a large head, with a very open facial angle, stubborn, as if predestined for heroic and long battles. A pointed, thinning beard lent firmness to his face. His broad chest had a powerful and serene breath; blood flushed the skin of his sturdy neck and cheeks; thick red hair covered his robust wrists and hands—atavistic hands with long, reckless fingers. Ricardo Villarroya was at the height of his artistic prowess: his latest books had earned covetable success; his juicy and violent critical articles established him as a champion of the young literary world; the only comedy he premiered sparked heated controversy. He was also a bit of an orator; the extreme left wing of opinion adored him. His name, which served as a standard for the greatest audacity of form and thought, resounded like a warlike alert in the feverish atmosphere of the assemblies. Everything about him was impetuosity, restlessness, arrogance; ambition burnished his clear eyes; his vicious lips laughed wickedly; in the continuous vibration of his healthy, strong body, full of youthful appetites, there was something like a voice of his kind. Fuensanta Godoy watched him attentively, with sad emotion, while she caressed the novelist’s right hand with her fine, white hands . “I love you,” she said, “I love you so much… in a way my worn heart never expected to love again. Why do you reciprocate with dishonest currency? Why are you not good to me? Why don’t you try to be faithful to me?” Villarroya’s shoulders sketched a movement of indifference. She continued: “You may come across women more beautiful than I, or more intelligent, more elegant, more agreeable… But it will be extremely difficult for you to find one who possesses these qualities in those modest but well- balanced proportions in which I combine and blend them. I am not gorgeous, nor overly discreet, nor excessively gallant and captivating, but there is something of both in me, and this conjunction of amiable virtues is my pride. ” He listened to her, nodding his head in absentminded assent . “And if that is so,” Fuensanta continued, “why do you forget me and put other women aside?” Why, knowing my jealousy, do you hang over my head the threat that today, tomorrow, when I am happiest and least expect it, you will be my traitor?… I know well, too well, perhaps, the complexion of your soul: you belong to that cursed race of those who worship only the distant, the unattainable, what no one has ever obtained. Why do you not apply your indomitable spirit to the examination of their memories? Why do you despise the past? Did not that yesterday, which you look down on today, serve as a smiling tomorrow for other men who stirred and loved before you?… Listen, Ricardo, and obey me, for we can still be happy. Do you not have children and a wife? And when the legitimate, consecrated home annoys you, do you not have me? What more are you seeking? What impossible novelties do you ask of chance? He argued slowly, gently, as one speaks to the sick, and his words, spoken in a low voice, brought with them the lullabies of childhood. In the implacable contests of art, the most feasible thing is to overcome obstacles, to rise above the surface, to rise from success to the golden glory, for the old masters whom youth harasses are exhausted and defend themselves poorly. The difficult thing is to hold the positions conquered, to resist the fierce attack of the novices who are arriving to battle, to assert one’s personality in the midst of that unleashed whirlwind of enemy arms surrounding the dictator. According to Fuensanta Godoy, to win in that enormous tournament, where all the haughty furies of vanity intervene, one must have great ambition, boundless pride, or a blind and immoderate love; A feeling, in short, deep, fanatical, that is enough in itself to repair all the breaches that disillusionment’s blows and fatigue’s stealthy counsels open in enthusiasm. “But if you only worship what you don’t have,” he continued, “what can sustain you, encourage you, fortify you when you are undone and about to fall?… It is certainly sad to succumb in the darkness of the first assault; but isn’t it worse to see the honey of our popularity crumble into oblivion? Ah, Ricardo! You don’t know that; you don’t know the suffering of the artist who outlives his prestige and, no longer able to overcome the reputations that are improvised around him, says: ‘Years ago I was something, I had a name…’ Believe me, Ricardo, that is horrible; the experience I gained in twenty years of theater assures you of it…” His voice died away in a sigh, and the mourning of his soul passed across his face like a shadow. Fuensanta Godoy was just over thirty years old, and her black dresses, lasciviously tight around her body, formed a sculpture of long, undulating lines. Deep furrows of melancholy cut her forehead, adorned with curly brown hair; her nose, with its impeccable profile, seemed sharp with suffering; in her mouth, with a rare humor, laughter and tears wove a sorrowful hue; beneath her Raphael-like eyebrows, her very black and sad eyes, slightly slanted, perhaps, like those of Japanese women, gave her white, earthy white face the sweet expression that embellishes, with the poetry of enigma, the faces of the women of the City Without Night. Among the perfections and qualities that enhanced Fuensanta’s accomplished beauty , the best and most striking, the one that most surprised, was her sadness. Pain, which has inspired supreme creations in art, is also often the origin and nourishment of strange beauties. This deviation or whim of aesthetic feeling has no easy explanation. Why We love sadness and find ineffable and unhealthy contentment in half-measures? Does the suffering of others involve something that indirectly excuses our own weakness, or does pain divinize women because it emanates from them, and so whoever said pain also said art and sex? Fuensanta Godoy’s expression of inconsolable sorrow made her infinitely interesting. Five years earlier, Godoy had been a highly popular leading comic soprano. At the beginning of the theatrical seasons, her name appeared on the posters in striking red letters, newspapers published her portrait, critics celebrated her work, and the mail brought her daily rumors of amorous whims. The court of admirers who invaded her room at the theater, the applause of the audience, and the humiliation and harsh envy of other actresses she had defeated in artistic competitions, seemed to give her young figure a diamond halo. Fuensanta Godoy loved and was adored; neurasthenia exacerbated her affections; under the flagellant blast of her passions, the untamed network of her nerves suffered painful twists; the sensation became a torment for her; her unbalanced little head, where the memory of pious books she read as a child lingered, experienced frequent bouts of mysticism, a desire to live quietly and alone. Beach towns attracted her; she adored morphine; she lost her inner rhythm; twice she was prosecuted and forced to pay expensive damages for abruptly leaving the theater where she worked to go to the countryside with a poor lover. Fuensanta Godoy’s artistic career was short-lived; at the height of her success and when her interesting, somewhat odd, Japanese bibelote youth shone on the stages of the great theaters, a clumsily treated laryngitis left her hoarse. Several doctors assured her that there was no cure for this condition. She, however, hoped. The night she reappeared before the public, ignoring cautious and loyal advice, she suffered a terrible disappointment. Her voice, at the end of a difficult musical moment, abruptly blurred; she tried to repeat the dreaded passage but couldn’t; some discourteous spectators protested. Then Godoy felt a great chill around her, a heartbreaking emotion of isolation, as if the theater had suddenly gone dark. She saw herself overlooked, poor, chained in that common grave where the ungrateful crowd buries the artists who no longer entertain them, and, annihilated by her misfortune, she burst into tears and lost consciousness. Ricardo Villarroya met her years later. Fuensanta lived in a boarding house whose owner had also been the owner of the theater. Godoy occupied two small rooms, with no light other than that of a window opening over a deep, unhealthy patio. an infected lung, never visited by the sun, through which the dirty and ragged neighborhood of the inner rooms breathed. An iron bedstead and a washbasin occupied the bedroom. The cabinet’s furniture included an old chest of drawers that, at night, in the silence, made frightening creaks, and several once-elegant chairs that now concealed their ineptitude and precarious frame under worn gray canvas covers. The yellowish walls were decorated with faded portraits of unknown actresses and actors, and an antique mirror, on whose glass the flirtations of youth, now long gone, reflected there, seemed to have left an indescribable melancholy. Several crowns, won on charity nights, explained from their glass-topped mahogany boxes the weakness and rapid collapse of human glories. The floor was covered by a threadbare carpet, whose colors were erased by dust and the scuffling of feet. In that little office, saddened by the winter and the presence of so many decayed objects, Ricardo Villarroya spent many afternoons. At first, he felt peacefully captivated by the solitude of the actress, dignified, haughty, irreducible, amidst her abandonment and extreme poverty. For a moment, Villarroya was flattered by the idea that Godoy was his last passion, his final whim, the culmination of his youth. Conqueror. The stillness of the environment contributed considerably to warming his feelings. It was undoubtedly beautiful to watch the hours pass. His wandering imagination understood the sweetness of repose; his wandering will divined the joy of not moving, of calming himself in the tranquil dominion of what had been won. To his novelist’s eyes, the chapters of oblivion and misery that concluded the story of Fuensanta Godoy offered astonishing interest. He placed himself in the place of the vanquished; misfortune is always lurking; for him, too, anemia or congestion could precipitate him from the deified heights of success to the shameful horrors of defeat. That is why he pitied her and was inclined to console her. But in artists, tenderness is transitory; their egotism prevails over the most serious; their personality encompasses everything; Thus, at the bottom of that ostentatious compassion, there was only pure selfishness. It wasn’t long before Ricardo Villarroya experienced his first bout of boredom: his temperament reacted cruelly to the passing emotion; he had just felt like a slave; the exploring artist, a vagabond of sensations, had defeated the disillusioned man in need of rest. Villarroya was bored; the old furniture in that damp room weighed on his lungs, and a sudden and vehement desire for freedom alienated him. Why should Godoy’s sorrows concern him, nor what altruistic sophistries sought to induce him to link his future to hers and, at all costs, serve her as counselor and defender? From that moment on, certain that piety, magnified by Christianity, is a surrender or cowardice of the soul, he thought only of flight, of freeing himself by breaking the sly bonds of love that bound him to Fuensanta’s lordly distinction and virtuous seclusion. These ungrateful maneuvers did not go unnoticed. The young woman immediately understood that her happiness was in danger, and she sensed her defeat. Men abhor the familiar, and nothing is sufficient to convince them that all pleasures are equal: passion is, par excellence, fickle; An ordinary woman, coarse, vulgar, ugly, will have over the beautiful woman we possess the immense advantage, the indisputable preeminence, of “being someone else.” That afternoon, Fuensanta Godoy and Villarroya argued for a long time; the novelist felt annihilated, shattered by the dialectical vigor of his interlocutor. Without the breath to defend himself, he entrenched himself behind an unassailable, vertical assertion: “I was born this way and I can’t be any other way. Therefore, your insistence on showing me that I’m wrong is useless.” She continued attacking him, sometimes with jealous impetuosity, other times with maternal tenderness. “How little you love me, Ricardo! ” “You’re mistaken; I love you… I love you quite a lot… a lot. ” “And yet, you talk about leaving me… ” “Quite true. ” “Then what kind of love is that?” Cursed be the affection that forgets and sees without pain other lips caressing and other arms clasping what was once its own! The same old refrain again? How long would they continue like this? Ricardo Villarroya shrugged his shoulders contemptuously and lit a cigar. It was five o’clock; the rain repeated its lulling chant on the zinc window; nighttime darkness invaded the room. Fuensanta turned the light switch, the study lit up, and on the murky expanse of the walls the old gray chairs reappeared; the ancient dresser, full of disturbing sounds; the pale portraits; the mirror, the withered wreaths, expressive and sad like mummies behind their glass covers. In a corner, on the black carpet, the red light of a brazier shone steadily , fixedly, like a round, eyelidless pupil. The young woman continued, modulating her words with a long sigh: “How cruel you are, Ricardo!” “Perhaps…” “Very cruel, very selfish; believe it: your heart is made of stone… ” “And yours? ” “When it comes to you, it’s made of wax and honey.” Beneath his russet mustache, Villarroya’s lips gave an ironic smile. “You,” he said, “trying to impose your tastes on me, are as selfish as I am defending mine. Why should we be ashamed of our feelings and not call them by their name? Why esteem compassion, which puts the well-being of others before our own, a virtue, and curse selfishness, the precious foundation of personality? Enough of stale affection! To live and to live well: that is the only positive truth. Furthermore, being selfish, we exercise an aspect of philanthropy: selfishness is charity applied to ourselves…” They argued, he advocating the joy of moving, of exploring hearts, of being ungrateful. “The spirit,” he said, “has landscapes, like Nature. Nature composes them with trees and mountains, and nature with illusions and memories. There are clear and easy characters, similar to plains, and others as harsh as cliffs.” I also know feelings that hide an entire panorama of the soul, and we need to wade through them, just as travelers search behind an inconvenient hillock for a beautiful horizon; from which I deduce that landscapes and people should be examined “from a certain point of view.” Every spirit, my dear, has the mystery of a closed home. Have you never felt, walking through the countryside, the desire to enter a lonely little house, open its shutters, violate the enigma of those rooms where other dark lives glided, and feel your footsteps echoing under those roofs that you will surely never see again?… A similar curiosity is illuminated in me by souls; I find an interesting one along my path and I like to study it, to discover its perversities, its excellences, and when everything has been well scrutinized… to leave it for others to examine. And he added, with a great cynical burst of laughter: “Oh! Life would overwhelm us without ingratitude. I bless ingratitude.” What would become of you and me, for example, if all the passions or love affairs we have inspired had been eternal? Listening to him, Fuensanta’s tired features betrayed a bitter laxity, an incurable dejection. At times, however, her gestures regained that free and buoyant impetuosity of yesteryear; but generally, her attitude was circumspect, gentle, weak, and between her tired lips, the most emphatic affirmations vibrated with the timid inflection of advice. “You are a hysteric,” she exclaimed, “a poor madman who vainly searches outside himself for what he carries within.” She remained indecisive, her bust leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, her passionate eyes shining beneath brows furrowed with reflection. “You are,” she continued, “one of the most complex and strange men I have ever known. I, who desire your happiness, would like to show you how the sensations you sniff out do not exist.” that joy is something ghostly and light that comes from your very soul as the shadow comes from the body, and that anyone, like you, who gained a wife, children, fame, credit, friends… everything! has no right to ask for more. Villarroya remained silent, vaguely recognizing that Fuensanta Godoy was speaking the truth. She continued: “You left your parents to get married; then you forgot your wife for your children, for it seems that your stunned heart only has room for one affection; later you neglected your children to continue your foolish story of mercenary love affairs. When you met me, you renounced everything; now the world calls you again and you want to leave me. What do you want? What are you after? Where will you find more than what my affection gave you?” There was another pause, one of those terrible silences in which we feel something fatal, inescapable around us, walking on tiptoe. Ricardo murmured thoughtfully: “I already told you; I am like this… as I was made… Fuensanta interrupted him vehemently: “You are wrong: your idiosyncrasy lacks lasting reality; in your volitional character, only the adjective or accidental has substantivity. A tyrant governs you: impression; that is why you run blindly after what, because it is new, you believe to be appealing and you flee from everything you judge bad and annoying for the mere fact of being familiar to you. That is what happens to you with me! Why, if not, would I myself, in whom a year ago “You adored me, now I make you sleepy? How sad! Ah! I would like to teach you a lesson, to chasten you from that vain mania which leads you to seek outside yourself that which belongs to you and is the work or reflection of your wandering fancy. Don’t you understand that the vigor you squander in useless adventures, applied to your art, would raise you to heights and victories even greater than those you have won?” Several knocks on the door interrupted the conversation. Fuensanta asked: “Who? ” A humble voice answered from outside: “Whenever you would like to dine… ” “Is everyone at the table? ” “Yes, ma’am. ” “I’ll be right there.” Villarroya consulted his watch. It was eight o’clock. “I’m leaving,” he said. He rose hastily, buttoning his coat and picking up his hat, which, upon entering, he left on a chair. Fuensanta approached him slowly: beneath her black suit, her body, at once graceful and ostentatious, undulated with a sensual rhythm. “Will you come back soon?” Ricardo could not hide a wink of disgust; the atmosphere of that little office, filled with old furniture, oppressed him. “I don’t know… I don’t know; I need to write…” She replied, smiling sadly: “You have nothing to do, but if you must work, work by my side. Come see me, I beg you; I’m so alone!” As on other occasions, compassion won her over. “Good,” she said, “wait for me; I’ll be here before eleven.” Fuensanta accompanied him to the door; there, her hands, agile and white, full of love, her poor hands, which necessity had stripped of rings, fixed the knot of his tie and smoothed his hair. “See you soon,” she stammered, “see you soon… don’t be long…” Left alone, the actress made a desperate gesture. “He doesn’t love me!” she sobbed. “He doesn’t love me anymore!” How could I win him back? She remained still, her eyes fixed on a portrait of Villarroya, at the foot of which the novelist had written: “These dedications are always sad. They all seem to say: ‘When you no longer see me…'” Chapter 2. Several days passed, during which Villarroya grew into that melancholic laxity that Fuensanta’s society produced in him. Where did such detachment emanate from? The novelist tried to scrutinize himself, to listen to himself, to surprise that subconscious bustle with which new desires and fading passions come and go through the spirit. However, his analytical efforts failed to lead him to a transparent and resounding solution. Sometimes he imagined that all this was the ungrateful fruit of his insecure, always indifferent nature, refractory to the grandeur of immobility; at other times he believed it was Fuensanta Godoy who had deceived him, promising him, with her frank beauty and discreet speech, sensations and joys that she later failed to deliver. Little by little, this latter idea prevailed. Women who are not fit to be hetaerae, nor do they have the passivity to adhere to the strict laws of traditional ethics , resemble those failed artists who, having been born to live vulgarly, nevertheless seek to die in beauty. Nothing can calm their suicidal obstinacy: the normal man, the ordinary man who feels and thinks and subjects his actions to custom, finds himself obscured within them by an unfocused and visionary subject, a plantation of fanfare, a honeycomb of unbridled ambitions and bitter resentments toward the strong who walk far from him and very high. Thus, those capricious women who neither knew how to grow old in the calm of bourgeois virtue nor had the courage to endure their sins; open orgy shames them and the peace of the legal bores them; when they are confined, they suffer burning yearnings for freedom, and if they roam freely, they experience the weariness of excessively long paths, the fear of the mud of disdain that society throws at those who rebelled against it. Men usually feel ill around such women; They are sick souls, fatally sad, who under the roof of the calm home yawn with boredom, and moments later, in the bacchanal, put a threnouncement of repentance over the brilliant symphony of their excesses ; apathetic spirits, subjected to all the furies of the love and memory. Fuensanta Godoy was like that; the unfortunate woman, after losing all the battles she fought with love and art, felt the subtle aging of melancholy run through her face and body: suddenly her eyes went dim, her mouth lost the graceful line of happiness, her gestures slowed down, the black night of her hair paled, and on her forehead pain traced the lines of that sinister pentagram where every disappointment leaves a note. Involuntarily, Ricardo Villarroya recognized himself separated from her, and the fixity of this feeling was indisputable: what he sought far from Fuensanta was not only novelty , but also something positive, a treasure of healthy joy, which she, poisoned by the misery of her collapse, could not give him. Furthermore, the fear of resembling the actress ended up worrying him; Sadness and old age are contagious like typhus, and although the infection is slower, the cure, on the other hand, is much more difficult. Villarroya was afraid. What would become of him if suddenly, in the midst of a struggle, and by the work of that stealthy but sure influence of imitation, he came to feel limp and sad? And then the novelist decided to close his soft heart to all the murmurs of pity and open between himself and the abandoned woman an immense gulf, an abyss with vertical walls, wide and deep, that would make any reconciliation impossible. Good to suffer during working hours ! But it was foolish, it was suicidal, to allow that suffering to also blur the radiant light of happy hours. He would take the offensive: women who are too good nullify men, because they enslave them by taking away the opportunity to quarrel with them. “An honest, judicious, methodical mistress, who doesn’t even bother to deceive us,” Villarroya thought ironically, “is the only thing that makes adultery unforgivable.” Meanwhile, he continued visiting Fuensanta, captured by the spell of that intelligent, immensely sad woman. One night, after dinner, and already in his study, ready to write, Ricardo Villarroya received a letter: it was brought by a lad of sixteen or eighteen years old, dressed in black: a footman, no doubt, humble and shy, who spoke while looking at the floor. Ricardo slowly tore open the edge of the envelope, where the novelist’s diviner’s penetration had just revealed a romantic encounter. “Who sent you?” he asked, fixing his steady eyes on the boy. “A lady.” Villarroya unfolded the bill, while an imperceptible smile, both vain and captivating, passed under his thick, ochre-colored mustache. The letter read: “A chance occurrence has allowed me to discover the man who passes beneath my balconies almost every afternoon, and the illustrious prestige of your name has heightened the ardent desire I already had to meet you. When and where might I approach you?” The delightful little bill was unsigned, and after that question, enveloping like an embrace, the anonymity cast the sublime spell of darkness and silence. Villarroya paled; then he turned red; for a second his turbulent heart stopped beating; his muscles trembled. Why should the unknown always produce an impression of cold in us? Could it be because all those tiny mysteries that confront us in life are reflections or particles of the supreme enigma from which all things come and to which they return? Ricardo meditated for a few moments while consulting his watch; it was nine o’clock. Then, feverishly, he wrote on the back of a card: “After a while, at eleven o’clock, I’ll expect you on Valverde Street, at the corner of Desengaño Street. I kiss your feet.” The messenger had been gone for a long time, and Villarroya still lay motionless, his face in his hands, his elbows resting on his desk . A whipping emotion, absorbing like the suction of a whirlpool, had cleansed his mind of ideas. In the light that burned serenely in the middle of the office, the furniture cast long, motionless shadows against the walls. Villarroya’s family was asleep. In the silence of the house, with its doors adorned with austere curtains, Their plush, carpeted floors vaguely echoed the rhythmic beating of a clock; a symbolic swaying, revealing deep and grave mysteries, as eloquent as the beating of a heart. Finally, Ricardo returned to reality; it was 10:30. Then he stood up, turned off the light, quickly dressed in his overcoat, put on his hat, and without saying goodbye to anyone, tiptoed out, with the gait, at once wary and happy, with which married men flee from duty. When he reached the corner of Desengaño and Valverde Streets, he paused uneasily, searching for that tempting, romantic profile that waiting women have, especially at night. Passersby were becoming scarce; the vermilion glow of the streetlights skidded on the mist-damp sidewalks; one after another, the balconies and hallways faded, leaving vibrations of shadow and sleep in the streets. In the distance, beneath the livid starry light, the church of San Martín raised its squat, massive towers. It had struck eleven: little by little, a great silence invaded the city, whose deserted streets stretched on, inactive, winding, and limp, like tired arms; in the darkness, the minutes marched slowly, uniformly, painting a line of black dots toward eternity . Villarroya was beginning to grow impatient. That night he had dined better than usual, and once that almost morbid effervescence that good meals produce in nervous temperaments had dissipated, his thoughts were becoming clearer. There were moments when he thought he was waking up: the strange incident that had brought him there reappeared before his eyes in more modest proportions. He had a gesture of anger; then he felt ashamed of himself. It was unforgivable for him, a man of the world, to have rushed to meet his admirer, who certainly hadn’t expected to see him for at least twenty-four hours. He had behaved like those fatuous, bearded men, newly arrived in life, driven mad by impressions. “I’m a fool!” he exclaimed. He continued pacing, roughly stroking his rough, reddish mustache, damp with mist. He was enraged by the idea of appearing ridiculous before this woman, for whom , undoubtedly, waiting was the most exhilarating thing about her. He felt defeated, crushed, beneath the vulgarity of his impatience; nothing could excuse him; had a first-year Latin student been in his place , he couldn’t have done worse. Eleven-thirty struck on one of those old tower clocks whose bell worries the sick at night. A couple of lovers passed by Villarroya and disappeared down the twisting staircase that leads to the intimate dining rooms of the old Café Habanero. They were very amorous; she was wearing an elegant gray overcoat. The novelist, who remembered having encountered them days before in Moncloa, followed them with his eyes, and then saw, behind the thin curtains of a window that had just been illuminated, the happy conjunction of two shadows. For an instant, Villarroya’s aroused curiosity caught sight of a carriage approaching slowly; but that vehicle, whose tired horse could barely walk, was empty, trailing along the street the penetrating sadness of an unrented room. At twelve o’clock, convinced of the futility of his wait, the novelist, very dejected and cursing himself, returned home. “I’m an idiot!” he repeated. “I’ve ruined a precious adventure for a trifle!” He walked slowly, his stride long, his arms dangling. His expression had the tiredness of a man pulling something up a hill: thus he went, defeated, hopeless, as if he were dragging his dead hope along. To his consolation, the next day he received another letter by mail, also anonymous, from his unknown friend. The epistle, which was very short, began thus: “A sudden commitment prevented me from keeping your appointment last night. At first, if I may be frank, I will say that I was sorry; but very soon I consoled myself, and now I am happy to continue being a mystery to you. You are vehement and excessively curious. That is why I am afraid of our getting close; experience has taught me has shown that men forget quickly. “Calm down, my dear friend, much calmer; it’s a bit of advice my modest judgment gives to the most eminent writer. Don’t forget that ungrateful law of our wandering Nature, according to which, the longer we delay now in uniting, the longer we will later delay in separating…” And he concluded: “If you wish to answer me, do so at Lista de Correos, old letterhead, number…” In the afternoon, as usual, Villarroya went to Fuensanta’s house. The actress was by the window examining one of those old sotanís that arouse in retired actresses bitter memories of the theater and love. It was raining. A leaden light invaded the room, exalting the sadness of the furniture, the strangeness of the carpet, the cold of the walls, with their withered wreaths and portraits, where the ancient images decompose as the outline of corpses is erased in the dampness of the earth. During the first moments, excited by the worries of his incipient adventure, the gallant man was talkative and talkative. Soon, however , his restlessness subsided, and his thoughts began to revolve around what pleased him most. Fuensanta noticed his concern. “What’s the matter? I find you sad or restless… Perhaps some distress?” Ricardo’s features betrayed no emotion, before the actress’s blank stare. “Nothing’s wrong with me,” he replied; “what you notice about me is tiredness. I worked hard last night; today I also need to write.” Gently, watching him intently, while a smile of sadness and irony spread across her lips, Fuensanta replied: “Are you sure you worked hard last night? ” “Absolutely.” She didn’t reply and continued sewing. He exclaimed with cynical audacity: “What’s that about?” What misgivings does your question conceal? Do you distrust me! —No. And he added, sighing with a long, labored breath: —Poor Ricardo! —Do you pity me? —Very much. Villarroya shrugged his shoulders. —I pity you,—added Fuensanta,—because you are a dreamer, a great wretch, far-sighted in life, who, to enjoy things, needs to have them far away. This time he did not defend himself; his friend’s reproaches did not bite him, on the contrary; the hope of eluding the jealous custody of that woman whom he had never deceived produced in him that bittersweet excitement, a flower of puberty, that youth experiences at the prospect of their first offense. An indefinable joy possessed him; his will, rusted by the sentimental quietism of those months, stretched joyfully in the hope of a new adventure; Over his heart, the anonymous little note he carried hidden in a secret pocket seemed to hover around him with the radiant light of dawn. That night, the novelist didn’t see Fuensanta, and at the last minute, when he left the theater, he sought refuge in a lonely café; one of those eccentric cafés where misanthropes and lovers flock, in the sweet certainty of not running into any friends. Villarroya wanted to respond to the stranger, interest her, mortify her curiosity, hasten the outcome of the adventure as much as possible. The café Ricardo had chosen was completely empty; dawn was approaching; it was minutes before two o’clock; the light from the electric lamps slid stiffly over the stuccoed walls and burnished the lapidary backs of the tables, which, seen from a distance, looked like wrinkles in an enormous marble sheet. Beside the counter, several waiters, their bald heads also gleaming in the light, listened attentively to what one of them was reading in a newspaper. Ricardo asked for something to write; but before putting pen to paper, he thought it prudent to reread that anonymous letter, both naive and mocking, in which he simultaneously felt both admiration and compassion. Thanks to the novelist’s warm imagination, the most disparate ideas collided. He remembered the appearance of the young man who brought him the first letter, who, given his dress and respectful courtesy, could well have served as a snooper in some important house; and then he would observe the quality and fine fragrance of the paper on which those two letters had been written and the untidiness of the handwriting, searching in everything for evidence of the patrician or plebeian condition of their author. Who could she be? Perhaps a hetaera, temporarily won over by the fame of the artist in vogue, or a virgin exploring sensations, or one of those widows who, after living many years in virtue, are suddenly frightened by the prospect of reaching old age without satisfying the whim, latent in all women, of having been frivolous… Be that as it may, he judged that what he could most advantageously oppose to his admirer’s brief, malevolent missives was a long, fiery, impassioned letter; for, in the end, in life, as in the theater, force always triumphs over the rhetorical devices forged by discretion and irony. Dominated by this thought, he began to write: “Madam: I don’t know you, and yet I already adore you; I adore you because you are strange, refinedly strange, and unique, in the midst of this society where everyone looks alike…” He continued writing rapidly, without pausing to correct anything, as if struck by a burst of eloquence, until he had filled the four pages of the letter with nervous lines dictated by the most lush and plateresque style. A few nights later, he wrote another letter; but this time his words were sentimental, light, merely descriptive, for he was wary of revealing himself to the reading eyes of his sweet enemy as excessively declaiming and grandiloquent. “I am writing to you,” he said, “from a very modest café in the Plaza de la Cebada. I am alone, I am sad, and in these hours of quiet and melancholy, my wandering thoughts turn toward you. The appearance of the scene surrounding me contributes to strengthening this pleasant memory. “Have you never considered that, like me, you know ‘the delicate language of things’ in what we might call ‘the soul of the café’? “Crowded cafés are odious to me; their soul is vulgar; a scoundrel soul that laughs coarsely and argues loudly, and becomes passionate without reason and smells of tobacco. As we enter them, a gust of hot air hits our faces; curious eyes meet us, guess our profession, and ask us ‘what are we looking for there?’ The smoky atmosphere is pervaded by the russet background of the divans, and in the pearly light of the electric lamps, vibrates a multitude of top hats, bowler hats, and soft, artistic chambergo hats dented by the distraction of a gesture. And that furnace-like atmosphere is stifling, and that loud murmur of conversation irritates the senses and feebly predisposes the nerves to impulse. Better are the solitary, silent cafes of the suburbs. These establishments have a good spirit; within their softly colored walls, footsteps resonate calmly, and consciences “feel” cleanly; something familiar beats within them; their simple soul is one of love and peace. At night, a great white light fills them; the floors are clean; along the walls, and beneath the tall, gilt-framed mirrors, the backs of the divans paint a red plinth. Here and there, in the corners, there are whispering couples in love, grave gentlemen reading a newspaper, individuals distracted or perhaps tormented by deep worries, staring into space. Beside a column, the watchful profile of a waiter appears, a friendly silhouette, immobilized by the servile habit of waiting; and since her white apron hides the lower part of her body, her head and shoulders seem those of a bust placed on a pedestal. “I have often pondered the enigma of those figures, silent and still, who grow gray in the silence of small eccentric cafes: they are types we meet by chance one day when the rain or the need to write a letter, like this one, led us there, and whom later, returning from a journey that may have lasted several years, we see again in the same place. Then their memory is reborn in our memory, haunting us. Their suit is probably new, but it has identical color, the same cut as the one they wore when we met them; the expression of their resigned attitude is also the same. Something powerful emanates from them: it is the power of the immobile, of that which ages without trembling, of that which awaits. When they look at us, they seem to say: “We knew you would return…” “Who are they?” we think. “One of them is called Don Juan, the other may be called Don José or Don Pedro; but of their private life no one knows. An inexorable mechanism governs their actions. They have “a way” of entering the café, of taking off their coat, of sitting down, of unfolding their newspaper; then, always at the same time, they call the waiter quietly, with a slight nod, pay, and leave slowly, as if measuring the space that separates them from the door. Perhaps they are bachelors who refused to start a family, or widowers whose bedrooms were chilled by death, or married people for whom there is no voice of love that stealthily extinguishes in men the desire to go out at night… And that is why they go there; because the kind soul of the café, warm and distinguished, has for their wishes the sad softness of home. “Something strange floats in the air of those salons of “everyone”: it is the melancholy that the lonely old men spread around them, the trail of ingratitude left behind by those lovers we saw there one winter, and suddenly disappeared, separated by the same disease of forgetfulness that snatched so many white hands from our hands. “Ah! If the mirrors in cafes, those good mirrors into which all women, as they leave, cast a glance, could speak, we would know why the faces of old people are so sad… “And now, tell me, madam: Is it possible that later, on a night like this when it’s cold and rainy, your head and mine will be reflected together in the same glass?” Several days passed without Villarroya’s letters receiving a reply. The novelist’s suspicious and preoccupied spirit began to grow impatient. Why such silence? He reviewed at length everything he had done and said during that last week and found nothing to reproach himself for. He considered the possibility that his letters had been lost, and this, far from mortifying him, gave his pride sweet satisfaction. But later, reflecting on it more carefully, he recognized that such an accident, so fortuitous as it was, should not be admitted, much less made the guiding principle or script of his actions, and that, consequently, in that torturous silence, as if concocted by a skillful serial writer, there was only a woman’s coquetry. Despite such reflections, the mocked gallant could not reduce his shock. Fuensanta, who had observed him implacably, recognized him, and her face, always sad, seemed to be covered with a new melancholy . Ricardo confessed his restlessness, which he hypocritically attributed to the imbalance in his nerves left by the excessive work of those days. This malaise forced him to move, to feel bored everywhere , to flee from himself. As soon as he arrived at the actress’s side, an inexplicable gloom would disturb his thoughts. His flesh complained of the hardness of the chair; the air of the narrow room oppressed his temples; the furniture, the old portraits, the light from the well-lit window, all evoked painful memories; abruptly, without knowing why, he would stop talking or rudely interrupt Fuensanta Godoy with gestures of annoyance, or change his seat, seeming to him that these changes of attitude, while altering the perspective of objects in his eyes, also obtained a certain momentary peace for his spirit. When he left the room, he also found a certain relief in walking quickly; he went to the theater, the Athenaeum, or the café, eagerly seeking people, whether or not they were close to him, with whom to chat. In a few days, this neurosis grew rapidly; the isolation and the rest led to the anguished hallucination of suffocation; he became desperate; his will flitted from one desire to another, futilely searching for a comfortable position. His torment was the torment of those wandering souls for whom every hour brings a problem; problem, never resolved, of what they should do. A letter from the Ignored One, a divine letter that came from mystery, calmed this uneasiness. Written with a firm hand, it read thus: “Those paragraphs that describe what you call ‘the soul of the café’ are very beautiful; but I notice, with surprise, that you, like most gentlemen novelists, as soon as you leave the world of your imagination, commit the most vulgar errors. Yes, my admired friend: the portrait that your pen, so skillful when it invents, has painted of my spirit is completely false. I am not strange, I confess plainly, although my confession somewhat hurts your fondest hopes. I repeat that the extravagant never greeted me. I am a rich and free woman who seeks to amuse herself by satisfying all her whims. The artists, the ‘professors of beauty,’ have always deserved my sympathy; Today I am interested in you, just as I was yesterday in other men, just as it is likely that tomorrow a new ideal will achieve in my heart the place you now, by virtue of your talent, occupy. In this, as you see, there is only selfishness. What do you want? That’s who I am! The slightest of my whims inspires mystical veneration. Respect them as well; this is some advice I allow myself to give you: whims are sacred flowers of illusion, luxuries of youth, crowns of lilies and roses that shed the petals of the years. However, since I wish to please you and I know that you adore the unusual, I want us to meet “rarely.” How? Very simple: “Call me at night and in a room where we can be in the dark. We will talk. The tone of our conversation will determine whether you turn on the light and I stay, or whether you don’t turn on the light and I leave; but, before agreeing to this, I need to be assured that the gentleman to whom I so greatly entrust myself will know how to respect me.” Despite Ricardo Villarroya’s extensive experience, the sheer novelty of the event dazzled him. Another man in his place would have been suspicious of that unlikely encounter; but he didn’t hesitate; and since, by dint of pursuing the unusual, the bizarre was his element, he hastened to shake the white hand that was searching for him in the shadows. Circumstances, however, weren’t on his side. A few unhealthy hours of gambling at the casino had left him penniless; besides, his poor wife was bedridden, paralyzed by a violent attack of rheumatism. It was therefore essential to find money and come up with a strong, logical excuse to justify his absence from the marital home for one night. Without further reflection or more cautious inquiries, Villarroya arrived at the patient’s bedroom. It was six in the evening; A small electric lamp burned at the head of the bed inside a blue glass pineapple, its light spreading a soft yellowish green across the stucco . Ricardo approached the sick woman, rubbing his hands with that pride characteristic of healthy men. “Hello, ‘Chulita,’ how are you?” She slowly raised her head, and her pain and the joy of seeing him gave her eyes a moist expression. She had had a rather miserable day ; at times she imagined her femurs were breaking, and she clearly saw that Nature is a most expert sorceress in the art of torture and that no one knows better than she how to tighten the screws of torture and give duration to one’s desires. He added: “In a little while, I’ll give myself an injection of morphine; otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to sleep.” Villarroya listened, making gestures of disgust and commiseration. “Apparently, you haven’t experienced any improvement? ” “No. ” “By golly!” He stopped, nervously scratching his beard. “And these setbacks happen,” he continued, “when there is the most to do and I need the most peace of mind. ” “Do you have some unfinished business? ” “Just imagine! I came to tell you that tomorrow, probably, I won’t be sleeping here… or here or anywhere… ” “What? ” A great fear passed over the young woman’s face; it was the fear that her husband was threatened by some danger; a challenge, perhaps… There was in her fleshy face, framed by an abundant overflow of black hair, an emotion of perplexity. The novelist replied: “I have a dress rehearsal after the performance… ” “What? But are you going to premiere? ” Villarroya felt his composure weaken. “Bah! It’s an unimportant little work, a trifle that I’ve put together, out of obligation, in three or four hours…” There was a brief silence. His wife asked: “What’s the title?” Her tone was ironic. Then, seeing that Villarroya was taking a while to respond, she smiled. Ricardo burst out laughing and, suddenly filled with tenderness and love for his companion, he embraced her. She exclaimed without getting angry, with that maternal grandeur of spirit that vulgar and jealous women —jealous because they are vulgar—do not understand: “You didn’t need to lie to tell me that you wanted to spend a night away from home … ” When Villarroya went out into the street, he was uncomfortable with himself; Truly, what he had just done was an outrage; his poor “Chulita,” so resigned, so indulgent, did not deserve to be treated like that. Then he thought of Fuensanta. But, little by little, these remorses dissipated as the future once again convinced him that the unknown is the best… From his house, Ricardo ran to his editor, whom he found in one of those pessimistic moments that make merchants unapproachable. Villarroya asked him for 1,000 pesetas on account of his latest book; his tone was anguished. The editor understood this; moreover, he was familiar with the novelist’s unbalanced life, and took advantage of the opportunity offered to make a good deal, in exchange for a small advance. His astute refusals triumphed; Villarroya sold the absolute ownership of his work for 800 pesetas. The two men parted, smiling and happy. Villarroya immediately entered a tobacco shop, asked for stationery, and quickly wrote these concise, expressive lines, in bold letters, as if written by a twenty-year-old hand: “I’ll expect you tomorrow at Calle de…, number…, at ten-thirty at night. Go at ease.” Chapter 3. The refuge chosen by the novelist for the rendezvous was one of those tolerant houses, mysterious like chapels consecrated to some exotic rite, upon which women who live virtuously cast furtive glances of curiosity. Something silent surrounds them, and their facade echoes the experience of men and promises of strong and stormy joys to the candor of virgins. Beneath its roof, lovers, adulterers, all those whom vice, misery, or passion outlaw , meet, and the happy murmur of their laughter rises into the air like an evaporation of rosy flesh. By day, these asylums, with their half-open windows, where no one peers, seem dead; but at night, in the darkness of the street and beside the virtuous doorways, honestly impassive to the cold of the homeless disinherited , their hospitable entrance hall, always open, paints a white rectangle , past which a grim morality passes without a glance. Ricardo Villarroya had reserved two richly decorated rooms that would provide a worthy setting for his adventure. When he arrived, it was still a few minutes before ten-thirty. A tall, bony woman came out to greet him; one of those elderly duennas whose gestures, their youthful habit of pleasing, left an elegant rhythm. The novelist greeted her: “Good evening, Concha.” She responded with a smile, and they shook hands firmly, for a long time, with the warmth of complicity. “Have you come?” he said. “No.” And she added mechanically, out of her habit of calming men’s impatience: “It’s still early.” She led him to the rooms Villarroya had chosen. There they sat down. He looked around attentively, recording the position of the furniture and doors in his memory so as not to stumble in the darkness. He also looked for the small button for the light. She understood: “You have it there,” he said, “to the right of that mirror.” Ricardo nodded. There was silence. Concha exclaimed: “Tell me, tell me… What are you doing now? What is your life like after so much time? I’ve already seen your last play; very beautiful…” Inspired by a movement of sincere, friendly interest, she asked him about his children, unaware that these memories were causing him a certain unease. The conversation turned to the matter that had brought them together. “Now you can explain it to me properly,” said Concha, “because this afternoon, since you came so quickly, I barely knew what it was.” Ricardo read aloud his admirer’s last letter. She examined him attentively, with her astute eyes, accustomed to life’s ambushes and capable of reflecting all emotions except astonishment. Possessed of childish pride, Villarroya exclaimed: “Tell me, Concha, you who have seen so many things; isn’t it true that my adventure is extraordinary? ” “Indeed.” “And don’t you also think I have reason to jump for joy?” She didn’t reply, and her silence filled the gentleman’s ears with the coldness of a refusal. Ricardo looked at his watch; it was twenty minutes to eleven; the sudden suspicion that the long-awaited woman might not come sent a jolt of pain through his nerves. He remembered that she hadn’t kept their first appointment and that this disappointment could be repeated. Concha had lit a cigarette and was looking thoughtfully at the ground. Suddenly , she exclaimed: “Do you have any suspicions about who the author of those letters might be? ” “No.” “During these last few months, have you met any woman who, more or less explicitly, has expressed her love for you? ” “I don’t remember… All I know about her is that she lives on a street I frequently pass, for in her first letter she declares it as such. But that explains little or nothing; one travels so many streets in a day!” He stopped, still searching his memories. Concha burst out with a malicious laugh. “And you’re sure all this isn’t a joke? ” Ricardo Villarroya’s cheeks, so rosy they were, turned livid; for a moment his impressionable heart stopped beating; amidst the multitude of thoughts agitating him, his spirit performed an enormous tightrope walk. “A joke!” he repeated; “impossible! Who would do that to themselves?” “Here, anyone! A friend who wanted to laugh at your expense and who at this hour might be recounting it at the café table. ” When Villarroya didn’t respond, he added: “Yes, man, that must be it, because the other bit borders on the romantic, don’t doubt it; what seems impossible is that a man like you, so ignorant, wouldn’t guess certain things!” Ricardo remained silent, not knowing what arguments to oppose to those of that disillusioned rascal who made “bad thinking” an infallible criterion . Inside him, prophetic voices assured him that the unknown woman existed, that she was approaching, thinking of him… He glanced at his watch again; it was five to eleven; absolute silence filled the house where, by a most unusual coincidence, no one had come asking for lodging. Villarroya trembled; he had just felt that great magnetic chill of failed dates pass through the room. Childhood fears stirred his conscience; he remembered that during those last months his good humor, saddened perhaps by the shadowy presence of the actress, had declined, and that the day before Fuensanta Godoy, a mystic and superstitious woman, had said to him as she said goodbye: “I have prayed to God that no one would love you…” What meaning could those words have? Could that terrible “influence at a distance” with which medieval sorcerers were said to be invested be true? The novelist believed himself to be the plaything of some ironic or flirtatious woman, who had summoned him to drive him to despair and with those feints increase his already furious desire to meet her, and he was afraid; afraid of finding himself alone again with himself, exposed to the tortures of a new letter, which he did not know if it would take many days to reach him, or if it would never come at all… His eyes automatically questioned the old bronze clock that adorned the mantelpiece; one of those useless and showy clocks that They seem to preside over dorm life, and they are always stationary, as if afraid of separating those who love each other. Concha observed this movement. “It’s,” she said, “after eleven.” Outside, in the murmuring hollow of a courtyard, the song of the rain resounded. Concha, who felt cold and sleepy, wrapped herself more tightly in her shawl and lit another cigarette. Ricardo’s resolve sank : he had just recognized that he was somewhat ridiculous by surrendering so prematurely to the joy of a meeting in which he had no reason to trust, and he understood that the sound of the downpour consoled him because it seemed to offer some excuse for his disappointment. Slowly, the voracious illusions that had dragged him there were declining; an intrusive, subtle drowsiness was penetrating him; his tired lips yawned between the red forest of his beard. Still, however, his hope imposed a new limit on his impatience. He would wait another fifteen minutes, nothing more than fifteen minutes, and then… He waited, however, for twenty-five minutes. At eleven forty, he stood up, without caring to mask his furious mood. “I’m leaving,” he said. He headed for the door. Concha followed him, murmuring: “Why don’t you wait a little longer?” “I consider it useless; this is turning into a child’s game.” He still had a moment of weakness. “If she, by any chance, comes,” he said, “convince her not to let tomorrow pass without writing to me.” When they reached the reception room, they stopped, looking at each other in surprise and joy; someone had just knocked; on the other side of the door, a light rustling of skirts could be heard . Concha winked expressively at Villarroya to ask him to hide; the novelist quickly disappeared behind a curtain. Without hurrying, the old duenna opened the door. From outside, a female voice asked, “Don Ricardo Villarroya? ” “Yes, ma’am; it’s here.” In the dimness of the reception room that Concha had just left in darkness, the body of a tall, graceful woman, dressed in black, her face covered by a mask, vaguely emerged. Concha added, gently taking her hand, “Come here.” She led her a few steps through the darkness of the corridor; then she stepped back. Ricardo Villarroya had come out of his hiding place and was gesturing for where the stranger was waiting. Concha blurted out, “There she is, in the hallway. I’m going upstairs.” She left, closing the door. The darkness of the reception room was impenetrable. San Román advanced measuredly, his arms outstretched, until his fingers, open with the eagerness of searching, came across a small, gloved hand. There was the stranger waiting for him, motionless. Ricardo asked, “Is that you?” She replied with a sigh, rather than a articulate expression, the words, “Yes; I am… ” “Follow me. ” They walked along, holding that little hand, a little trembling, which spread a feverish warmth along his arm, and entered a room whose door the gentleman carefully closed. An almost imperceptible jingle of bracelets and the gentle rustle of her skirt indicated that the coat was trembling beneath her clothes. “Don’t be afraid,” Ricardo observed; “we are completely alone.” He led her without stumbling among the furniture that surrounded the perimeter of the room, the arrangement of which he could see with the eyes of memory, and went to seat her in an armchair with her back to the bedroom. He placed himself beside her on a divan. He was extremely agitated, so much so that he hardly knew how to begin a conversation. In order to say something, he exclaimed, “Are you calmer now?” She murmured, in a very marked Andalusian accent: “Speak softly. ” “Why? No one can hear us; the house belongs to us, at least for tonight.” There was a pause; the stranger seemed to be considering her reply. “No matter,” she said. “I, who wish to satisfy your appetite for the strange, will cast all kinds of secrets over this first meeting : the enigma of the darkness that isolates us, and also the The mystery of whispered conversations, which cloud the true timbre of the voice speaking to us and seem to come from far away. Such a strange reply inflamed Villarroya. “You are admirable,” he exclaimed. “I may know how to write books and plays, but you teach me the supreme art of beautifying and refining life; you are, therefore, a greater artist than I.” They began a lively, heterogeneous conversation, full of questions, as if, in that continuous discussion of various subjects , they were trying to wring some secret from each other . “When you arrived, ” Villarroya said, “I was about to leave. ” “Were you bored? ” “Very bored; I was desperate; I thought you wouldn’t come. ” “I couldn’t have arrived sooner. ” “I, on the other hand, have been here since ten.” “I didn’t believe you were so free. Don’t you have a woman waiting for you outside your home?” The pale, mournful, tragically sad image of Fuensanta Godoy stirred the novelist’s memory; he recalled her nose sharpened by pain, her bloodless lips, her ebony eyes swollen from crying… But he bravely shooed away that accusatory vision and replied: “I don’t love anyone, despite the efforts I’ve made time and again to feel love. Believe me; I can’t! From the good, but uniform and blurred beings that surround me, emanates a hateful, sedative, and enervating mist of vulgarity. ” It took her seconds to respond: “And me, what am I like? ” “In my eyes, sublime: you should be ugly and perverse, and I would adore you. Ah! You don’t look like other women; you are divine… ” “Divine? Why? ” “Because you are strange. To be strange is to have personality; And do you know how difficult, almost impossible, it is in this society, where the surrounding imbecility reduces and penetrates us, to remain within ourselves, to not resemble others? He continued speaking, always in a low voice to please her, and gradually his imagination was exalted and regained that seductive and ardent verb so often applauded in assemblies. Waves of blood invaded his head. “To face without weakness the harsh battles of art,” he said, ” we need to feel at our side the comforting presence of a very high ideal. The least important thing is the profits and the praise, seldom loyal, of critics. The purest, the most exquisite thing, is to have a corner, whatever it may be, where an intelligent woman, in love with us, exclaims as she throws her arms around our necks: “How beautiful your article last night was!” Then an indescribable joy fills us, our strength doubles, and we suffer the gnawing desire to write better— always better!—so that she can read us. Our spirit, which improves her image, returns to her: we want to distract her, entertain her, protect her from ugly memories, and if at night she smiles in her sleep, we think that our last song flutters over her brow. He harangued, lifted to the radiant zenith of the most fiery lyricism by an exaltation in whose genesis his flesh and spirit cooperated indiscriminately. That continuous, half-voiced speech and the darkness that enveloped him began to produce a certain physical discomfort. Two or three times he stopped, seeming to dream and that his words were falling into the void. To master his confusion, he would ask each moment: “Can you hear me?” She would briefly reply: “Yes.” And silence would once again surround them. There were moments when Ricardo Villarroya felt his head spinning from the pressure of the darkness. Furthermore, the impersonal nature of the dialogue, resembling a monologue, since his interlocutor barely responded enough to compel him to continue speaking, contributed to his confusion. “I still don’t know anything about you,” he exclaimed, “not even your name! Tell me ! ” His tone was one of anguish and pleading. She replied: “Call me whatever you like; for now, we’re better off like this; you’ll know my name later.” But no matter how carefully Ricardo controlled himself, the bewildered The excitement of his nerves returned. It is always annoying to speak in the dark, since we lack a direct vision of the person we are addressing. Imagination, however, usually gallantly fulfills its evocative mission and offers us a perfectly clear reflection in the mysterious mirrors of memory, so that its image rivals sensation itself in clarity and precision. But not even this last resort could be resorted to by the enamored Villarroya; he ignored the features of his interlocutor. Was she young? Was she pretty? What color were her eyes and hair? And what seemed most alarming to him: while he spoke, what was the expression on her face? Did she listen to him attentively? Did she mock him? At first, these questions wandered through his mind without coming to a conclusion; it was enough for him to know that someone was listening to him at his side. Later, as his imagination grew more inflamed, his ideas became entangled until they took on monstrous outlines. At times he thought his words were falling on deaf ears; at other times he imagined his interlocutor to be something chimerical, a witch, perhaps, with a sinister countenance, a vile mouth, and eyes never before seen and horrible. To recover from that nascent labyrinth, he tightly gripped the stranger’s arm, and his hand enjoyed the contact of hard, vibrant flesh. Then, as he continued his investigation, he received the kindly impression of rounded shoulders and a slender, wicker figure erect over the ampleness of her hips. Instantly, Villarroya found himself calmed; touch replaced sight; the thread of connection between subject and object, which had broken through the darkness, had been knotted. “I have you at last,” he exclaimed, seized by sudden tenderness. We will never be apart again, will we? Never! I will live for you, I will write for you, my triumphs will be yours… You… you are the woman I pursued in so many women; your spirit, the one I glimpsed beneath so many bodies that chance or whim made my own. Sinister soul, extravagant soul, soul of enigma, why did you take so long to come to me? He approached her and inhaled the danger of an exotic and violent perfume; his fingers slid gently over the head of the Desired One, appreciating the graceful contour of her nape, her small, earless ears, the velvet of her mask… And Ricardo shuddered again, thinking of those watchful eyes that searched for him through the double night of darkness and mask . The seducer had a burst of impatience. “Do you want a light?” He was about to get up; she stopped him. “No.” “Why? ” “Because… it’s not necessary.” And she added philosophically: “Let us imitate the example that life gives us. Through it, we never fare better than when we walk in the dark.” Ricardo didn’t reply; his teeth clenched; the blood tingled hotly in his fingers, open with the desire for domination; in the darkness, his shaved, russet head took on the expression of ancient conquerors, rapists and bloodthirsty, when they entered with a vengeance. He quickly recalled the arrangement of the furniture, the exact position of the door that led to the bedroom… “I love you,” he murmured, “I adore you… I would give my life for you!” She didn’t defend herself, she didn’t even speak; he kissed her forehead and her hair; his greedy arms encircled her waist; he lifted her from the floor, and through the darkness their two shadows walked intertwined… Suddenly, the voice of Fuensanta Godoy resounded; that imperious, vibrant, orchestral voice with which the actress had once tyrannized the crowds. “You’re a wretch!” she said. “You disgust me; leave me!” Villarroya let out a cry; cold, copious sweat flooded his forehead. The young woman repeated, placing both hands on his chest and rejecting him: “You’re a wretch!” She herself searched the wall, next to the nightstand, for the light switch; the room lit up. The lovers appeared standing , facing each other; their attitude was hostile; both were livid. Fuensanta spoke first; her words, rather than violent reproach, were of endless sadness and dejection. “You’ve broken my soul,” she said; “I can no longer love you; let’s leave each other. It’s horrible, horrible!… After what has happened, everything between us must end. ” He was silent; he had let himself fall into a chair; he felt like crying and buried his face in his hands. She continued: “You never spoke to me with the ardent eloquence inspired in you by that woman, whom you thought you were conquering tonight for the first time. Ah, Ricardo! What kind of man are you? What inexplicable mystery is there in you, and how could you dedicate so much enthusiasm to something you didn’t know?” She sighed, and in her lament there was the secret throb of a humiliated and jealous woman . Villarroya, recognizing himself as completely defeated and ridiculous, did not answer. “I have tried to delve into the depths of your character,” Fuensanta continued, “and I saw that in your soul, composer of comedies and books, there is only treason, whim, and deceit. You are not a man, Ricardo, you are an artist… nothing more than an artist!… and when I said artist, I meant absurdity, selfishness, and chimera. Step by step, during these last ten or twelve days, I have observed you, and none of your feelings have gone unnoticed. Since I know you very well, I wanted to exacerbate your illusion by bringing you to this meeting completely blind, so that it would be impossible for you to guess me. That is why I did not respond to your first summons, that is why I took so long to reply to your letters… and the anguish of waiting was for you like dust that impatience threw in your eyes. I have seen you fall. Today I was afraid to hear what you had to say here, and I pretended to be ill and, weeping, begged you to spend the night by my side. Impossible!” The impulse my anonymous letters stirred in you was too great; nothing could restrain you, nothing! I am sure you would have risked the lives of your own children to keep this cursed date. Battered in his pride, not knowing how to defend himself, and broken by so many contradictory emotions, Ricardo Villaroya burst into tears. The actress continued: “Why does an unsigned letter exert this inexorable fascination over your will, and by what mirage must you imagine the woman who proposes an extravagant date to be young and discreet, and not old and ridiculous? Ah! You don’t know what you want… or what you have… You are a poor , vain, unconscious man, devoid of judgment, who carries within himself everything he rejects or desires.” He remained silent; nevertheless, the tears, tiring him, had brought him beneficial relief; a gentle laxity was gradually taking possession of him. Fuensanta Godoy finished buttoning his coat. “Goodbye,” he said. “I know that any unknown woman will always inspire more affection in you than I do. Poor Ricardo! Walk… walk… that is your curse. ” She gazed at him for a few moments and left the bedroom; a moment passed; a door closed with a loud bang. Then, in the silence, the actress’s footsteps trembled as she came down the stairs; and that echo , ever more faint, had the solemn and concise rhythm of something passing… Ricardo Villaroya did not move; he was extremely tired; the feverish worries of the previous day had been replaced by a great calm. Within his spirit, lost in that enormous silence that follows great catastrophes, a wounded voice murmured: “Do not desire, do not seek, because everything is equal to everything else, and the past, like the future, are aspects of the same Disillusionment…” And his desolate conscience understood that that cowardly voice was right. Why desire? Illusion is a bad, unruly female who, under the roof of artists, only sleeps one night… Madrid.–November, 1906. RICK “If they tell you they’ve seen a horse fly and that it was a bay, believe it.”–_ Arabic proverb._ Chapter 4. The entire aristocratic world that frequents the stands of the great European racetracks knew the idolatrous passion that the jockey Juan Thom professed his horse Rick. For four consecutive years, Rick was invincible: his agility and vigor defeated the most solid reputations; the coveted laurels awarded on the Paris and London turfs went to him; no runner equaled his impetus; he was tireless and enormous like Eclipse, and fiery at the first charge like Vermouth. Many curious veterinarians examined him, believing his clavicles would offer a special disposition. Juan Francisco’s past was obscure and simple. He never knew his parents and left the Hospice at the age of twelve to work in the riding school of an old man, a former tamer of the royal stables, who had carriages and horses for hire. It was in the spacious riding school owned near the Hippodrome by that short , stout man, whom Juan Francisco remembered seeing at the Hospice many afternoons, that the boy developed an inclination toward the art that would later occupy his life; for the environment is something that modifies and clings to character, as perfumes cling to clothes. Thus, slowly, the appearance of the stables—large, bright, with their smell of manure, their asphalt floors, their sheds shining in the sun, and their white-tiled friezes—began to win over the future jockey and produce a deep, fresh contentment. Every morning upon awakening, the little boy had a thought that resolved itself into a smile. “I’ll be a jockey,” he would say. And this ambition was comforting, because it gave his life, his poor, nascent life, a drive, a direction, and a purpose. From very early on, Juan worked busily sweeping up dirt, polishing harnesses, removing mud from carriages, and carrying buckets of water from one place to another. He was small in stature, pale and thin in face, with small blue eyes fringed by russet eyelashes. He walked slowly, his legs wide apart, like a rider who has just completed a long journey and is very tired. The sound of his straw-stuffed clogs worried the horses, who turned their heads to look at him, pricked their ears, and fixed their shining eyes on him. Some snorted impatiently, others stamped their feet, and the metallic clatter of their horseshoes filled the sunny stillness of the stable. At first, this somewhat hostile curiosity frightened the boy; But then, with habit, his fears dissipated: the horses, in turn, recognizing him as a benefactor, neighed with joy at the sight, and he ended up approaching them without fear, giving them lumps of sugar and boisterously slapping their shiny, round haunches. Every morning, around ten o’clock, the master of the riding school appeared. His name was Don Pedro del Real, and those who knew him as a young man attributed to him a long and picturesque love affair. But if Don Pedro was, as they said, a tireless horseman, a reckless bullfighter, and a successful conqueror of women’s desires, nothing, or almost nothing, remained of that gallant past. Cunning time had undoubtedly changed his character, robbing him of his joy as it robbed him of his good looks. Don Pedro spoke little; he was a withdrawn, reserved spirit, between whose brows life had left a vertical crease of pain. Despite this, Juan Francisco loved him; he was never afraid of him; as soon as he saw him he would run to greet him, and the joy of the greeting flushed his cheeks; it was like a cry from his blood. This was an emotion that Juan Francisco, now a man, meditated on many times and that always, without knowing why, left him sad… One morning Don Pedro, contrary to his custom, was communicative and in good humor. That day he had nothing to say about the always-discussed quality of the feed, nor about the polished cleanliness of the stables; as he examined it, he found everything to be fine: the harnesses gleamed in the sun, as they should; the carriages, recently washed, had enormous pieces of polished jet; the red varnish on the wheels burned brightly in the the vast white expanse of the stable. Juan Francisco, in his shirtsleeves and a red man’s vest that reached his knees, followed Don Pedro, surprised to see him so happy. The master suddenly seemed to notice him; he looked at him intently, and as the boy’s gaunt cheeks flushed with joy, Don Pedro del Real smiled paternally. Then he grabbed him by the armpits, lifted him up, lowering and raising him several times quickly, as if to properly assess his weight, and then let him go. Juan Francisco landed on his feet, and his clogs hit the floor, creaking in the resounding emptiness of the hall. Several coachmen and grooms watched the scene, smiling. Don Pedro examined the boy; his skinny, spindly little legs, his narrow chest, the skeletal but vigorous thinness of his arms, the prognathism of his jaw, the nervousness of his grooved chest… and all that simian ugliness seemed to enchant him. “Do you like horses?” he asked. “Yes, sir, very much,” replied Juan Francisco. “And they don’t scare you anymore? ” “No, sir. ” “Well, then…” And the former horseman, who undoubtedly loved his profession passionately, interrupted himself to observe the boy, who perhaps embodied the type he had dreamed of as the perfect jockey, weightless and wiry. He continued: “Do you want to be a jockey?” A white, idiotic smile crept across Juan Francisco’s huge, faun-like mouth , with that idiocy of stupor that happiness produces in men . He was slow to reply: “Yes, sir… I certainly do! ” “Agreed; Well, I’ll teach you to ride. That same morning, Juan Francisco received his first riding lesson, and from that moment on, every Sunday and holy days, master and disciple would go out galloping along the El Pardo road. They were terrible excursions, from which Juan Francisco, shrunken and rickety on the sweaty back of his mount, would return as pale as death. The boy quickly grew more agile, growing stronger, despite his caricature-like thinness, and acquiring that simultaneously light and Herculean build of good horsemen. He also possessed, and Don Pedro immediately noticed this , what cannot be learned, what might be called “the instinct” of the trade: a special, inexplicable, highly personal tic that transforms the seemingly common profession of horseman into a true art. There are rules for what, in riding school slang, is called “hurrying the horse”: to steady its head, to secure its mouth, to open it and give it showiness and grace, to keep it firmly in the saddle… All of this constitutes the adjective, what can be imitated from a good master. But none of these acquired skills was enough to make a jockey’s name truly famous. The great jockeys of world-renowned prestige possessed, in addition to that composure that allowed them to take advantage of every mistake their rivals made, the “intuition” of the horse, a kind of divination or second-sightedness that told them how they needed to hold the reins and how much, at a given moment, they should do. Regarding this essential or substantive part of their profession, nothing can be regulated, just as nothing, in matters of love, can be prescribed regarding how to win a woman’s heart. Who could say what look, gesture, or inflection of voice, in the nuptial “quarter of an hour” of conquest, will give “Don Juan” victory? Such is the case with the jockey, for whom a well-timed spur or a simple trembling of the knees can mean triumph or defeat in the last desperate start of the race. Like “Tenorio,” Fordham isn’t formed: it’s born. Juan Francisco possessed this marvelous gift to such a degree that it surprised Don Pedro himself. Without knowing why, since his experience in horse racing was zero, a simple glance was enough to determine the condition of the horse he was about to ride. He was rarely mistaken. It seemed that from the first moment a magnetic current arose between him and his mount. that pressed and united them in the miracle of a single will. At the same time that Juan Francisco was learning to hold himself firmly in the saddle and to be a shrewd, steady, and courageous rider, capable of governing the most twisted and unruly colts with only the control of his knees, Don Pedro was teaching him to corroborate and select his pre-excellent physical disposition as a jockey. “A good jockey,” the old horseman affirmed, “must combine great muscular strength with the smallest possible weight and volume. I mean: he needs to be a kind of dwarf Hercules.” To achieve the former, Juan spent two or three hours a day at the gym; for the latter, his teacher outlined a dietary plan, prescribed special massages, and forced him to take long walks and take sweat baths. These harsh treatments, which not even English jockeys can endure, Juan Francisco endured perfectly, without any loss of muscular vigor. From month to month, the tiny boy became more pale and gaunt, and it seemed as if his stature had even diminished; however, neither his agility nor his strength diminished. Soon his weight dropped to fifty kilograms. Don Pedro del Real examined him, pressed his pulse, and an admiring wink lit up his thick, usually impassive face. “You were born to be a jockey, boy,” he said, “and I assure you that you will have a career; I understand a lot about that; I don’t deceive myself.” He was not mistaken, indeed. Four years later, Juan Francisco appeared as a jockey before the Madrid public for the first time and won second prize. Chapter 5. When Don Pedro del Real died, Juan Francisco entered the service of Count Narciso, who had stables in Paris and owned the mare Turia, which the previous year had won the 100,000 francs prize at the Jockey Club. Count Narciso enjoyed the reputation of being one of the most intelligent and expert horsemen in Europe. In his stables, he kept magnificent mares from Iraq and superb stallions from the ancient and glorious stables of Count Lagrange, the first Frenchman to win the coveted Derby prize from the English. From these wisely calculated crosses was born a breed of horses admirable for their size, their polished build, and their ardour, with which their owner had won many thousands of francs on the turfs of London and Paris. The best jockeys in Europe had ridden on the count’s horses, for whom he paid extraordinarily generously for the rides, but very few managed to earn his sympathy, much less his trust. Count Narciso was a man of about fifty, elegant and proper, a little cold, who always wore gray suits made in London and wore a new pair of white gloves every day. He would greet the jockeys standing up, examine them quickly, and then dismiss them with a disdainful, irrevocable, royal gesture. “For now,” he would say, “you’re no good for me.” And he would turn his back on them. Thus, Count Narciso’s favor was considered in the jockey profession as a doctorate. Juan Francisco went to visit him armed with good letters of recommendation; however, he was timid and stammering, like a student about to take an exam on a subject he hadn’t learned well. He had just turned twenty: he was a tiny, gaunt, flexible, and vibrant little man, as if his steely flesh lacked a bony framework. Over time, that caricature-like rickets that so excited the veteran Don Pedro del Real had become exaggerated to the point of implausibility. A copious array of closely cropped red hair covered his long, flat, dolichocephalic skull; he had a short, depressed forehead, cut transversely by two deep parallel wrinkles; his eyes were small, round, and blue; his curved nose jutted out, bold and sharp, like a ridge; the sickly prognathism of his lower jaw sunken his cheeks and sharpened his bloodless, freckled face: it was a true jockey’s jaw, jutting out from the horizon when stumbling and looking like it was made to cut. the air. A servant led Juan Francisco to the count’s office. “Please wait,” he said; “the count is bathing. ” The young jockey remained standing motionless on his spread legs, filled with anxiety inside his loose brown coat. The room in which he sat had two windows overlooking a garden and was spacious and bright. The walls were lined with long cupboards filled with beautifully bound books, on whose multi-colored labels the light was happily reflected. Here and there, in studied disorder, appeared equestrian scenes and portraits of famous jockeys and horses. Above the fireplace, as if in a privileged place, was the photograph of Grimshaw, who had won the Derby prize riding the French horse Gladiateur ; and beside it was that of the jockey Fordham, the unconquerable champion of long-distance races. In artistic plush-covered frames, whose lush green color recalled racetracks, appeared several heads of famous runners: that of Monarque, father of Gladiateur and of a whole generation of terrible runners; that of Liouba, his favorite mare; that of Vermouth; that of Eclipse, the best horse of the eighteenth century, victor over Bucephalus, one of whose hoofs, enclosed in a beautiful objet d’art, was given as a prize in an Ascot Cup race. In the half-window, also occupying an ostentatious and prominent place, was a portrait of the famous Baucher… Contemplating this display of equestrian celebrities, Juan Francisco thought: “If only I were only worthy of the honor of appearing here one day!” The door to the office had just been slowly opened, and from under the heavy moss-colored curtains that covered it, the proper and sympathetic figure of Count Narciso appeared. His noble, calm, worldly baldness shone in the light; his cheeks, lightly tanned by the fresh air and the sun, were covered by a well-groomed, short, white beard. He was dressed, as usual, in a light gray suit; the wide trousers fell confidently, in accordance with the severe canons of English elegance, over his gleaming patent-leather boots. Juan Francisco bowed respectfully, his feet together, his arms rigid along his chest. Before this grotesque little man, who recalled Darwinian theories, the count seemed satisfied. The jockey expected his interlocutor to ask him a few questions, but he was mistaken. Count Narciso simply observed him, undressing him and carefully weighing him with his gaze. He saw his narrow forehead, his sharp, strong chin, his narrow chest that barely offered any resistance to the air; and at the same time, his intelligent eyes appreciated the terrible nervous strength of that dwarfish body. “How much do you weigh?” he asked. “Forty-eight kilograms. ” “That’s fine. ” “But I still hope to reach forty-five.” A slight tremor of admiration passed through Count Narciso’s eyebrows, which were not inclined to surprise . He seemed enchanted. Juan Francisco had just won him over, more than with his appearance, with those brief and confident answers, where there beat, like a fanaticism, that “love of the horse” that fills the soul of thoroughbred jockeys. “How much did you want to earn?” the count asked. “Oh!… We’ll talk about that later, if it pleases the gentleman, when he sees what I’m worth up close. ” “Perfectly. Then, from this moment on, you are at my service, and tomorrow you will leave for Paris. ” “As the gentleman wishes. ” “But I need, and this is indispensable, that you first change your name: find yourself an exotic, monosyllabic surname that will easily impress the ear.” Juan bowed ceremoniously and left. From that day on, the obscure hospicio who had always signed himself Juan Francisco began to call himself “Juan Thom.” The triumph that the young jockey achieved shortly after on the Longchamps track earned him a place of honor among the most distinguished riders. famous from across the Strait. That afternoon, Juan was riding Abril, a five-year-old chestnut, new to the racetracks, and nevertheless much talked about by the intelligentsia; what the English call a dark horse. The day before, Count Narciso had exchanged a few words with Juan Thom; he didn’t want to say anything to him about how he should handle Abril; he preferred to let him take all the initiative and thereby assign him all the responsibilities. As if speaking of an old friend, the jockey calmly replied: “Don’t worry, Count Abril; Abril and I get along very well.” The race was about to begin; the starter gave the signal, and the horses set off. For the first few moments, all the competitors moved forward as a group; but very soon Abril was leading the race and had a lead of several meters. Beside him rode Prometheus II, winner of the Oaks and champion of the British racecourses, with whom the English hoped to win that year’s 100,000 francs for the “Grand Prix.” For an instant, April’s hands faltered, and Prometheus II, springing beneath his jockey’s whip, took first place. That was a moment of indescribable emotion. The current King of England, then Prince of Wales, who was in the stands, waved a handkerchief over his head in token of victory, and a throaty and harsh “hurrah!”, uttered by thousands of Saxon voices, crossed the air. But Jean Thom did not yet accept defeat. His Latin soul, invincible in the reckless impulse of the first impression, formed a heroic resolution, and, with skillful slowness, he turned his horse from the straight line and discreetly threw it at the competitor who was snatching the victory from him. Thom’s and the other jockey’s knees collided, remaining tightly stitched and superimposed for a few seconds; the bones creaked; suddenly Juan Thom, who hadn’t lost his composure, felt the pressure of the enemy’s knee on his hamstring; that three or four-inch advantage he had just gained decided the fight in his favor. Prometheus II, disconcerted by his rival’s cunning maneuver, which blocked his path, lost ground, and Abril arrived first in the stands, to a roaring shower of applause. With no family or friends, and endowed with a quiet and judicious nature, Juan Thom had nothing outside of his job to startle or distract him. He spent his afternoons in Count Narciso’s stables, examining the tack, modifying the shape of the saddles to lighten them, studying the quality of the feed, always worried about the horses getting fat. And he himself was subjected to cruel massages and gymnastic exercises that gave his lean muscles the dryness and hardness of iron. By greatly refining his diet, he ended up eating very little: one of his greatest endeavors was to have the waist of a child; according to Jean Thom, the ideal jockey must lack a stomach. Thus, Count Narciso’s confidence in the skill of his first jockey was boundless. Thom ordered crosses that would improve the racehorse breed, and was amazed by the supreme insight with which he sought in the parents the qualities of agility, willpower, and strength that would later shine in their offspring. From the cross of the mare Rocío with an English stallion, for which Count Narciso paid eight hundred thousand francs, came Rick; that terrible _Rick_, never defeated under Thom’s knee, whom several veterinarians recognized by searching the anatomy of his clavicles for a special complexion. Chapter 6. Juan Thom, who was already approaching forty, adored _Rick_, in whom his old jockey’s asinine instinct divined extraordinary qualities of agility, vigor, and courage. In a certain way, this passion was the result of the environment that surrounded him. Good old Thom, puny and ugly to the point of being comical, with his little bowed legs, his long, knobby arms, and his ape-like head , had not known how to start a family. Besides, he was afraid of living always under the somewhat gloomy skies of Paris or London. Truly, Juan Thom, who had some savings and was beginning to feel old, felt a hidden and quiet desire to return to Spain. That disillusionment with his current life was like an atavism to him; the melancholic need that all men who lived constantly in large cities experience to return to the countryside, as if suddenly vibrating in their depths was the love of Nature, of the murmuring brooks, of the shady forests, of the mother earth, beneficent and bountiful, adored with pantheistic worship by their ancestors, the remote aborigines, wild and naked. Juan Thom dreamed of his old Castile, dry and flat: he would settle in a town, buy a small house, tend a garden, and then, when chance brought him a good wife who would take care of his estate, he would marry and have children, and die forgotten and peaceful, far from the resounding din of the racetracks. The appearance of Rick momentarily shattered these Christian resolutions of serenity and isolation. Juan Thom saw him born, he presided over his life, he, through sheer determination, removed all bad blood and bad tempers, exercised his intelligence, infused his willful nature with daring determination, nourished his muscles, gave his limbs, with the help of wise exercises, those gigantic proportions that no other horse would later equal, and instilled in his instinct that spark of fierce pride that determines victory in all battles. At five years old, Rick had nine toes above the brand. He was a bay, a shining, tan bay. The bloody color of his nostrils and the burning gaze of his jet-black eyes gave his head a powerful and fearsome expression. He had a broad chest, a rounded rump, and cupped hooves; his back was undulating, his mouth steady and fresh. His long, lean oars ignored fatigue and covered an enormous stride; as he walked, his entire vibrant body trembled, following the erect, robust neck that seemed to drag him along behind it, toward the horizon. He was as gigantic as Eclipse, agile as Vermouth, willful and impassioned as Monarque. Jealous of his power, he would not allow the proximity of any shadow; the slightest noise startled him; his pricked ears , more than astonishment, revealed anger. He always seemed like a fugitive, and his eyes darted from one side to the other, staring at his haunches, as if frightened of himself. His imposing figure intimidated his competitors; in Count Narciso’s stables, there was a horse that, whenever he found himself in a stable with Rick, would sprawl and sweat. On race days, in the morning, Juan Thom would enter the stable to greet Rick. “There’s a fight today, Rick,” he would say; “you have to behave.” The noble animal would look at the jockey, then snort, and its muzzle would reveal its bare, yellowish teeth, as it practiced a proud smile. Thom would then give him sound spankings, stroke his mane, kiss his nostrils, and whisper words of love into his ear. The grateful beast lowered its head and narrowed its eyes… On the racetrack, Juan Thom and Rick, forming a body governed by a single, omnipotent will, revived the fable of the centaur. Impetuous in the charge, tireless and tenacious in the race, Rick possessed something of the power of the cosmic elements. His burst of momentum was always terrifying, almost decisive; but in the fight, his fiery, hard will, as if made of fire and diamond, found no rival. His drive, moreover, was conscious: Thom could leave the reins around his neck, certain that Rick would not waste any opportunity to win. Not satisfied with this perfect alliance, Juan Thom had taught his horse a guttural cry that, like a spell, had the power to alienate him and send him into a frenzy. –Gruiiii!… Gruiiii!… It was a hoarse, brief scream, with a unique modulation, clarinet-like and wild, which the astute jockey only uttered in times of danger. Extreme; a cabalistic voice that perhaps struck at the animal’s cerebral centers and unsettled it. No one, not even Count Narcissus himself, knew this trick; but even if someone had, they couldn’t have used it. The virtue of those words that penetrate to the depths of certain souls depends, more than on their concise meaning, on the way they are pronounced and the rapport between the speaker and the listener. A woman hears a man she ‘s indifferent to say, “I love you,” and remains cold; but the man she fancies says it to her , and she goes mad. Jean Thom knew this, and the force of fascination he had on his horse gave him the assurance of being invincible. Several times he tested the propulsive power of that cry. “Gruuuuu!” And he always reached the finish line first. Hearing this, Rick would be beside himself: instantly he would snap at the bridle, stretch his neck, his four oars would form a horizontal line with his belly, and he would leap, as if something electric had exploded inside him. He seemed like a stone shot from a sling; his speed was the whistling speed of an arrow. He was flying. The astonished crowds greeted this unprecedented run with a murmur of amazement. Mounted on Rick’s enormous, trembling back, the tiny Juan Thom, whose spurs barely reached his mount’s belly, looked like a monkey with a stomach ache. And yet, for Thom, the winner of every race, it was the applause, the handshakes , and the smiles, sometimes voluptuously promising, of the elegant women who filled the stands. With his peaked cap, his red silk jacket, his tight white trousers, and his patent leather chambergas, Jean Thom stood, on the green carpet of the racetracks, as grand as a king. His small bust remained rigid, insensitive to the incense; his thin, disdainful mouth, almost imperceptible like a scalpel wound , never smiled; his small, hollow eyes stared restlessly into space, devouring the distance. Astride Rick, Thom was the incarnation of the god Success: the victories of the famous horse, which made millions of francs swing, had the importance of a great stock market play. A critic, recounting Jean Thom’s latest triumph, said that with the banknotes Rick had won, the Champs-de-Mars could be carpeted. The idolatrous care with which Thom surrounded his horse, the suicidal zeal he put into sharpening and diminishing himself so as to weigh as little on Rick as possible, the pangs of vanity and self-interest that clouded his spirit, the week of feverish anxiety that preceded the great equestrian tournaments, the dangers of the fight, and, later, the applause he garnered from that incessant and close collaboration, had strengthened the bonds of almost paternal love that the jockey professed for his horse. Reviewing his memories, Juan frequently recalled the impression of the office where, many years before, he had first seen Count Narciso. The appearance of that room lingered in his mind in minute detail: the gutta-percha furniture, the cupboards crammed with volumes, on whose tiles the morning light glimmered, the portraits of famous jockeys and horses scattered across the uniform gray walls. And the ambitious longing that the austerity of that office had stirred in him was also revived: “If only I could become a world-renowned jockey! If only I could achieve the fortune of owning a horse that would go down in history like Eclipse and Monarque!” Now he recognized that life had not been all bad for him: he had triumphed, all his wishes had been fulfilled, and this gave him a sweet and profound equanimity. Contrary to what usually happens in the theater, where it is not unusual for the leading man, even if he is in love with the leading actress, to be mortified and jealous of the applause given to his partner, Rick’s cosmopolitan celebrity was nothing more than the corroboration or complement of Juan Thom’s celebrity. Popularity caressed them Likewise: the color of little Thom’s silk blouses dictated the fashions of the spring and autumn seasons; a Parisian shoemaker put on sale a pair of chambergo boots identical to those he wore and which bore his name; the heads of the invincible jockey and Rick often appeared together on the front pages of illustrated magazines. Juan was heading toward immortality, and he was carrying Rick, his masterpiece , almost his child. Thus, never with greater reason than then could it be said of any artist that he rode toward triumph on the back of his own history. Chapter 7. Every afternoon during the races, upon leaving Longchamps, Juan Thom would empty a bottle of wine in the tavern of a Bordeaux native who had traveled extensively in Spain, and whose picturesque conversation was for the exiled jockey like a ray of the cheerful sunshine of his homeland. While Monsieur Gustave bustled about in the dining room, serving the customers who arrived, parched with laughter and eager for beer and jokes, little Thom would sit on the restaurant’s terrace, in front of which the Bois de Boulogne stretched its green immensity. The twilights of those warm spring evenings were very sweet: the blue sky, where the sunlight was fading into a range of countless shades of paleness, was slowly covered with white clouds and pinkish cirrus clouds of a very delicate amber transparency; the crowd returning to Paris left behind a silence, a great, hieratic silence, which could be heard; along the Avenues, the noise of the cars and the crackling shriek of car horns diminished, blurred, in the distance; The halo-like cloud of dust raised by the passing crowd, like a halo many miles away, descended back to earth, and the atmosphere regained its clarity. In the luminous clarity of space, the forest’s foliage formed a wavy, cerulean line. And as the ephemeral clamor of men ceased, Nature reappeared, solemn and overpowering, in her magnificent double gesture of absolute silence and eternal stillness. From the distance came the chirping of sleepy birds and the murmuring of brooks, which until then had seemed silent, and which brought a desire for peace to Juan Thom’s soul. Hours before, the little jockey’s lungs had become congested in the anguish of the race, and when, as always, he reached the finish line first, his cheeks had the pallor of dead flesh. Now he rested; His bloodless lips opened with delight to the breeze, and in the vermilion circle of his eyelashes, the small blue eyes that fatigue had sunk regained their vivacity. His simple soul stretched in this physical well-being. “How long will I live like this?” he thought; “this can’t go on forever; we must conclude…” And without being a philosopher or understanding the slightest bit of transcendental problems, the tiny Thom, who was a perfectly ordinary little man, asked himself with dismay: “Why do I so defend a life in which I have not managed to be happy?” The thread of these melancholic meditations was usually broken by Mr. Gustavo, always wearing an apron and shirtsleeves, red-faced, Herculean, full of health and laughter on his big, nail-studded, clanging shoes. “Hello, Mr. Thom!” cried the man from Bordeaux; “What are you thinking about?” The jockey would shudder, stunned by the unexpected question, and take a while to answer. Then he would say: “What do I know! I was bored…” “When are we going back to Spain? ” “I don’t know; but just imagine, I’ll leave any day now. ” “That’s only natural. What the hell! I’d like to go to Bordeaux too. That sky… there’s no other! Besides, I believe that men, after traveling the world, should go and die in the place where they were born. ” He would sit down and, familiarly, with southern liberality, pour himself a generous glass of wine from the bottle the jockey had ordered. “To your health!” he would exclaim. And, raising it high, he would drain it in one gulp. Juan Thom would look at him smiling, and realize that he was more insignificant and diminished. than ever, before the athletic bulk of the laughing, sanguine innkeeper , who forgot his widowhood by closely embracing the neighborhood maids , and who, as he spoke, would slam his fists down on the tables. Señor Gustavo had a daughter, Marta, with whom Juan Thom would exchange long paragraphs. She was a dark-skinned, somewhat sad girl with judicious and honest eyes that sweetly suggested the idea of starting a home. The jockey often spoke to her about Spain, and although his stories were true and contained nothing extraordinary, the young woman listened attentively, attracted by that legend of love and blood that surrounds the sun’s favorite countries. One day, when their conversation was more intimate, Marta asked him: “Do you have a father? ” “No. ” “And a mother? ” “Nor. ” “And brothers? ” “Nor do I have brothers. I am alone in the world. In Spain, no one is waiting for me.” I don’t even have a friend there… “It’s strange! ” “Yes… very strange!… I mean…” And she, without knowing why, felt sad, and for the first time realized that Jean Thom was very ugly and had gray hair. Surprised to see her so silent, the jockey asked: “What are you thinking about? ” “Nothing; that’s all…” Thom closed his eyes and his memory delved uselessly into the darkness of the Hospice. His childhood was there, his memories stemmed from there… But what before? And suddenly he felt like crying, because he felt that life hadn’t had any kisses for him. The following evening, Jean Thom couldn’t speak to Marta. It was Sunday and the tavern was full of thirsty customers, laughing and chatting loudly; the lights paled in the pipe smoke. Thom, from the terrace, looked into the establishment. Mr. Gustavo, standing behind the counter, his forearms bare, hairy like a faun’s, seemed to preside over the gathering. Marta walked from table to table, solicitous yet grave, and as she leaned forward to pour a pint of beer or pick up some glasses, her vibrant, erect breasts stood out boldly beneath the fine fabric of her bodice. Thom watched the young woman, and a melancholy, almost anguish, was taking hold of him; he also noticed that several drinkers, who were already beginning to look drunk, were looking at her avidly. Why is it that of all feminine perfections, the breast is what most awakens and excites a man’s lust; and why is it that women, especially those most predisposed to childbearing, most enjoy being fondled there? Isn’t there, in all that lustful power of the breasts, which nourish the life of the newborn, a kind of “voice of the species”?…? Jean Thom was thinking about this, and at the same time he felt a strange and painful unease, which was like a threat, like the premonition of an approaching danger. He began to monologue: “If Marta were my girlfriend and any of these barbarians disrespected her in deed or word, what would I do?” And when he felt obliged to answer this question, the idea that he was tiny, puny, and weak cut him like a knife in his dignity as a man and as a lover. The jockey had just emptied his bottle when the expected danger arrived. A customer, who had ordered a bock of beer, struck up a conversation with Marta: he was a blond-bearded individual, dressed in a corduroy suit , who was laughing rudely. The young woman tried to leave, but her interlocutor held her by the apron, and the eyes of the friends who were hanging around with him burned with desire. Suddenly, taking advantage of a moment when Mr. Gustavo had his back to the room, the man in the corduroy suit stretched out an arm, and his clumsy hand, hungry as a claw, clenched joyfully on Marta’s breast. The girl screamed, and Juan Thom, beside himself, entered the tavern. With the agility of a cat, he threw himself at the insolent man. “Scoundrel!” he cried. Feeling attacked, the drunk stood up and waited for the jockey to He repeated his attack, and then, with a single blow of his fist, knocked him to the ground, curled up in a ball, at Marthe’s feet. Fortunately for Thom, Monsieur Gustave came to his defense: he guessed what had happened. “Thunder of God!” The syllables of the favorite oath of the good French people whistled through his teeth, which were tense with anger. The drunk tried to defend himself, but his resistance was in vain: the innkeeper grabbed him by the lapels with one hand, to secure the blow he was going to deliver with the other, and then, with a straight and sure blow, threw him onto the terrace with his face broken and bathed in blood. That night, Jean Thom dined with Monsieur Gustave; Marthe ate with them, but she kept getting up to serve them. The two men discussed the incident, pondering the same details: Jean Thom had just emptied his bottle and was standing on the terrace, facing the tavern and looking at Marta; Monsieur Gustave was behind the counter with his back to the room; at that moment… “Well, if you don’t come right away,” declared the jockey with sympathetic straightforwardness, “that jerk will be the end of me. ” “Well!… But the maid came out with a straight face. Eh?… I have very firm fists! Whoever I grab by the throat can kiss his family goodbye…” Speaking thus, the innkeeper laughed uproariously, with a thunderous violence that made the glass in the cabinets rattle. Abruptly, recognizing the humiliated jockey, he interrupted himself to say: “My goodness! But you’re brave!” Jean Thom modestly lowered his eyes. Mr. Gustavo repeated: “I believe it! You’re a brave man… Because you have no strength… One sneeze and you’ll fall to the ground…” And when the jockey didn’t reply, Marta replied: “Yes; the poor fellow couldn’t have done more… But he’s so small!” Thom looked at the young woman and his gaze filled with tears. Marta, who was taller than him, pitied him. He had never felt more insignificant than he did then. Then two customers came in, and Mr. Gustavo, who had already dined, went to serve them. Juan Thom drank his coffee alone. From time to time he sighed and stared into space, smoking his pipe. Suddenly he felt a certain sweet relief. He had just surprised Marta watching him from behind the counter, over the newspaper she seemed to be reading attentively. Chapter 8. One morning, upon waking, Juan Thom asked himself: “Why am I so sad?” His was, indeed, an ancient and deep-rooted melancholy that had bitten him repeatedly, but without him knowing that the profound, cold feeling that robbed him of all voluntary impulse and explained the voluptuousness of dying was called sadness. While he was dressing, little Thom questioned his conscience again about the malaise that was gradually invading him like a bitter wave; and when he did so, he did so out loud, as if someone other than himself were about to answer his question: “Why am I so sad?” It wasn’t nostalgia for being an expatriate, nor for being ugly, nor for living poorly despite how hard he had worked: it was something else, something else… What could it be? Until his nameless restlessness took on a face and a name. That revelation was unexpected and dazzling, like the work of trickery or a spell. “I’m in love with Marta…” Juan Thom thought with amazement. And it was so: in souls, movements are generated and are subject to the mechanical laws that govern the dynamism of machines. In these, for example, the impulse that makes the gears of three or four small wheels slip over each other is communicated along the transmission belts to other larger gears, and from these to even larger ones, and finally to a gigantic and tremendously powerful flywheel that, by feeding the life of the factory with its work, resumes and expresses the energies that all the wheels, shafts, pistons, gears, distributors, and belts developed before it. The same thing happens in souls, where it is not unusual for everything left in them by heredity, temperament, education, example, and other factors that contribute to the formation of character to suddenly unite, and feelings that before seemed antagonistic then merge to flow along the same channel and form a solitary and all-powerful current. This surprising and marvelous transformation, like a magic comedy mutation, was what, in the rapid course of one night, changed the simple soul of Juan Thom. He, little accustomed to meditation, had lived ignorant of himself and far from his own conscience: he, who was born in a clandestine institution, experienced, undoubtedly by atavism and without knowing it, nostalgia for the mother and father he had never known; He, unwittingly, perhaps also suffered from the melancholy of growing old far from his homeland, the total absence of cherished affections, the despairing emptiness of glory, the frozen weariness of an existence already declining and still aimless, the grave-bound terror of souls who walk alone. And suddenly, these secret disillusionments, which corresponded to so many desires, merged into a single, brusque longing; a single, despotic, rectilinear impulse. Just as arteries collect all the blood from their capillaries, or as a river harvests all the waters of the basin where it is born, so the illusions, the despair, the raptures, the memories—everything the spirit of Juan Thom had experienced and still hoped to experience—were synthesized and mingled in a gesture that had a woman’s name: Marta. And he thought of nothing else: it was essential to approach her, to win her over: there lay the sure compass of his joys, the ineffable remedy for all his sorrows. And Jean Thom, as he finished tying his tie in front of the mirror , declared decisively: “Yes, that’s why I’m sad; because I’m in love with Marthe, and I didn’t know it.” The afternoon the jockey decided to declare his affection to the young woman, she listened to him without flinching, with that coldness inspired by unwelcome confessions that have been seen to arrive slowly. “As far as I’m concerned,” she said, “there’s no problem; you seem like a good man to me… that’s the main thing. But I need to know my father’s opinion: I don’t do anything without his consent. ” “In that case,” replied Jean, “I’ll speak to him… ” “As you wish.” Jean Thom’s conversation with Monsieur Gustave was reduced to a question of numbers: Marthe’s dowry did not reach fifteen thousand francs. Jean, it seemed, didn’t have much more, and no one can settle down decently with thirty thousand francs. Jean timidly hinted at his desire, which was becoming more evident every day, to retire to the countryside. The innkeeper interrupted him: “Martha, accustomed to the cheerful bustle of Paris, wouldn’t want to live in a village, much less separated from her father. ” “I haven’t questioned her about it,” he concluded, “but I know her, and I don’t think she’ll agree.” In front of Monsieur Gustave, healthy, herculean, almost wealthy, with the credit of a thriving business and the obedience of his beloved wife, little Thom felt stunned and tiny. What if he had been able to counter the somewhat impertinent demands of his presumed father-in-law with the affirmation that Martha loved him! But the young woman had made it quite clear: “I do nothing without my father’s consent.” He therefore had no weapons with which to fight and had to submit to whatever the enemy decided. “And later,” the innkeeper continued triumphantly, “when the children come, what would you do?” The jockey, without raising his eyes from the ground, nodded, acknowledging with that affirmative sign that Mr. Gustavo was right. “Work a few more years,” the innkeeper concluded, “and we’ll see. My daughter doesn’t need to get married yet. Do you know how old she is?” “She’s… twenty?” “Just nineteen. She’s too young. ” “Yes, she’s young,” Thom replied, sighing. “She can wait… I believe it! But I can’t; I’m getting old.” Despite the negative results of that first attempt, Juan Thom He continued to go to the tavern almost every evening. Sometimes he would dine there and then, while drinking his coffee and smoking two or three pipes, he would immerse himself in a newspaper; other times, when he was in a hurry, he would have a bock and leave. Marta, standing before him, her hands in the pockets of her little white apron trimmed with lace, would bid him farewell with a friendly little smile. “Good evening, Miss Marta. ” “Good evening, Mr. Thom; see you tomorrow.” This trivial farewell, which contained a sort of desire to see him again, consoled the jockey. “If I didn’t come back,” he said to himself, “they would think I considered him offended and would speak ill of me.” On Mondays, which were slow days, Monsieur Gustave and his daughter dined with him. The innkeeper was very fond of horse-racing, at which he risked three or four louis every Sunday. Little Thom’s friendship had been very useful to him; thanks to him, he had earned more than six hundred francs in those last two months, and this inspired him with a deep gratitude for the jockey. “How do you manage,” he said, “to know so perfectly the condition of each horse? If I possessed such skill, I assure you that, before I grew old, I would be a millionaire. ” Motionless and pale as a wax figure, Jean Thom replied, winking his eyes. “That’s a gift you can’t acquire anywhere. I don’t ‘study’ the horse I’m going to ride: I ‘divine’ it…” He spoke of Rick, who was his passion, his pride: he described his complexion, his coloring, the expression in his eyes, his sovereign breath. To distract his interlocutors and convince them that the best horses are dark or tan, he told a story he heard as a child from his master and teacher, Don Pedro del Real. Legend had it that a blind sheik was being led by his son, fleeing from a horde of furious enemies. “My son,” asked the sheikh, “what horses are our pursuers riding?” “ White horses, father.” “Then let us lead them where there is sunlight, for in the sun they will melt as if they were snow.” Several hours passed in this way, when the sheikh asked again: “My son, what are the horses I hear galloping behind us like?” “They are black, father.” “Then take care to lead them over rough ground, for if they are so hard and hard they will break their hooves on the ground.” But then, as the old chief felt that the noise of his pursuers was drawing nearer, he anxiously inquired again about the color of the horses they were riding, and when he learned that they were chestnuts, he exclaimed: “In that case, it is best to hide ourselves and let them pass. Otherwise, we shall be dead.” “And that’s what Rick is like,” concluded Juan Thom, “like those Arabian horses that run without breaking a sweat, all day long, under the desert sun.” They continued chatting until nine-thirty or ten at night, when the jockey, needing to get up early, would retire. When he left, the innkeeper, more affectionate than before, accompanied him to the door, looking at him with tender, sympathetic eyes that seemed to say, “Don’t think I’ve forgotten the conversation we had one afternoon: my daughter and I were thinking of you.” One evening, Señor Gustavo and Marta invited Juan Thom to dinner; they both seemed preoccupied and spoke little. At dessert, the Bordeaux native asked, “Tell me, friend Juan: do you have much confidence in Rick? ” “I have more confidence in him,” replied the jockey gravely, “than in myself . ” There was a long silence that disconcerted Thom. That unexpected question had just plunged him into an abyss of doubt. The two men were looking at each other, smoking their pipes: Marta was reading a newspaper. Mr. Gustavo was the one who spoke first: “Has Rick never been beaten? ” “Never,” replied Thom, whose little eyes blazed with pride. “It’s just that the best horse can falter at any moment… become confused… ” “But not this one!” interrupted Thom, proud and magnificent. “I’ll answer.” of him. Rick, under my knees, is invincible! At that instant the little jockey appeared transfigured and improved: his simian profile trembled with angry emotion. Martha had stopped reading and fixed on him a straight gaze of curiosity and surprise. Monsieur Gustave brought down a formidable fist on the table, and raising his voice greatly in a sincere explosion of generosity: “Well, if that is so,” he said, “Martha is betting the fifteen thousand francs of her dowry on Rick… And you are married! ” A cadaverous livor covered the jockey’s freckled and gaunt cheeks, and a mortal tremor shook his poor dwarf frame. “Is it true, Martha?” he stammered. “Is what Monsieur Gustave says true?” And the young woman, barely smiling, replied: “Yes, Monsieur Thom: my father said so…” Jean Thom felt emotion choke him: gratitude and joy filled his eyes with tears, and he burst into tears. “Thank you,” he stammered, “thank you very much… I am happy now… I no longer have any doubts… Martha will be mine!” He fell silent and, without knowing what he was doing, stood up; but he immediately had to sit down. He was dazzled: a bright light had just passed before his eyes . Chapter 9. The Grand Prix races, held on the Longchamps turf, were arousing extraordinary interest that year. There was talk of a bet of five hundred thousand francs pending between Count Narcisse and an English sportsman, owner of the Cromwell, who had won the Diana prize and was considered the strongest runner on the British racecourses. The sports papers assured that the fight between Cromwell and Rick would be exciting: it was the first time that those two riders, until then unbeatable, had pitted their strength against each other. Many intelligent people voted for Rick; others, however, said that the abilities of the man known, par excellence, as “the first horse of France,” were declining, while Cromwell, younger than his glorious enemy, was reaching the fullness of his vigor. Juan Thom, for his part, had no doubts of victory, and alone in the stable with Rick, he hugged him and kissed him, talking about his upcoming fight, where victory was essential because his marriage to Martha depended on it. “If you only knew how much I love her! That woman can make me happy, Rick; help me achieve her. Wouldn’t you like to see me happy?” Moved by his own words, the jockey felt his love for Rick overflow, turning into deep and heartfelt gratitude. Rick listened, his ears flattened, his head lowered so his jockey could scratch his forehead; and then he would raise his powerful neck with a snort of pride. Suddenly, as if by magic, adversity came to destroy Juan Thom’s plans. At the beginning of April, a month and a half before the Grand Prix races, Count Narciso died, and his son and heir, with whom little Thom had had a disagreement months before, dismissed the jockey. That night, Juan tearfully told Señor Gustavo of the misfortune that had overwhelmed him. He was beside himself. The loss of Rick drove him mad, not because he would run out of bread, for Cromwell’s master, as soon as he learned what had happened, sent for him, but because he loved Rick and felt that with this one the story of all his triumphs was being taken away from him. In those first moments of heart-rending sorrow, the jockey didn’t talk about his future or his love for Martha: he only talked about Rick, who was his past; a magnificent past, glorious as a forest of laurels. “I saw him born,” he said weeping, “I trained him like no other horse has… he is the fruit of all my studies!… Without him my fame will collapse, because I have lost the desire to work, and I will be one of many…” It was already late, and Mr. Gustavo, as soon as the last customers had left, closed the tavern. Then he placed three doubles of beer on the jockey’s table , lit his pipe with a worried air, and sat astride a chair, waiting. Marta watched Thom without He understood him , finding this artist’s passion a little ridiculous. But the jockey’s tears had moved the southern heart of the innkeeper. “There’s no need to despair,” he said. “Thunder of God! You, it seems , are one of those men who are shipwrecked in a mouthful of water. ” “Me? Why?… Have I no reason to despair? Don’t you understand that this accident destroys all my plans?” “That’s what I’m getting at. I promised you to gamble Rick with the fifteen thousand francs of Martha’s dowry… ” “Yes, sir. ” “Well, I never regret what I offer; so if I don’t gamble them with Rick, I’ll gamble them with Cromwell… Well… are you happy?” Jean looked at the ground without answering. The innkeeper’s generous words did not seem to have cheered him. Mr. Gustavo continued: “I have immense confidence in you, and I think we won’t lose the bet, eh?… Tell me, I don’t think we’ll lose it…” There was a silence, during which Marta stared at the jockey, as if emphasizing with her eyes what her father had just said. Juan Thom remained motionless and silent; his face was very red, his breathing was shallow, his little blue eyes dilated within the circle of his reddish eyelashes. His freckled cheeks trembled. This silence, which seemed to conceal a doubt, alarmed the innkeeper. “Have you seen Cromwell?” Mechanically, the jockey replied: “I’ve seen him. ” “How old is he? ” “Seven years old. ” “And is he really a magnificent animal? ” “Superb. ” “Will you ride him comfortably? Do you feel capable of winning with him?” There was another pause. Little Thom clasped his hands together, cracking his fingers. The innkeeper grew impatient. A cloud of distrust darkened his brow. “Because we must speak plainly,” he exclaimed. “If you’re not sure of winning… what the devil!… there’s no question of it!” And Marthe, who was no doubt anxiously thinking that the fifteen thousand francs of her dowry could be lost, added softly: “I too am in favor of waiting; don’t you think so, Monsieur Thom? We shall be patient.” These cautious words of prudence and lack of love shook the jockey’s little body, and he glared at Marthe. The young woman seemed resigned, and the serenity of her attitude ratified her father’s decision . Jean Thom felt that this last bastion of his happiness was slipping away from him as well, and his pride as a jockey and his affection for Marthe restored his defeated vigor. “You can bet on me,” he exclaimed; “and let’s not speak of this again. Cromwell will win!” Hesitantly, the innkeeper ventured to object: “And if you are mistaken? ” “No, sir. ” “It would be horrible if you, carried away by your good intentions…” The jockey interrupted him with the vertical and magnificent gesture of an emperor. “I repeat that I am not mistaken,” he said; “I know what I promise. Cromwell will win.” During the forty days that remained before the famous horse competition that marks the dispersion of the Parisian aristocracy to the seaside resorts, Jean Thom devoted all his efforts to the physical and moral education of Cromwell. He was a pitch-black horse of gigantic height, with fine limbs and neck; his large, ugly head had extraordinary power; when he walked, his whole body swayed to and fro with supreme agility. Little Thom spent his days beside him, studying his condition, accustoming him to his habits, training him in those strenuous exercises that would give his muscles greater elasticity and strength, carefully correcting the quality of his food. At night, before going to bed, he also went to see him, pampering him, talking to him, voluntarily trying to show him that great paternal affection he felt for Rick. And there was in this effort something of the futile effort that mothers put into consoling themselves, with the child they have left, for the child who is gone. He also tried to teach him that war cry he gave to Rick. invincible: –Gruiiii!… Gruiiii!… But this mysterious avatar did not awaken any emotion in _Cromwell_. The jockey who had broken _Cromwell_, and was considered to be one of the best horsemen in England, could he also have possessed some blow or word that had the capacity to unhinge him?… This was impossible to find out, since jockeys never tell each other such secrets, and Juan Thom was relieved considering that the cry that had upset _Rick_ was not known to anyone either. Not satisfied with perfecting the physical and moral excellences of his new horse, the veteran jockey, taking advantage of every detail that could cooperate with the success of his enterprise, constructed a special whip, at once light and very hard, and ordered a saddle to be made that barely weighed two pounds and whose wool and silk stock he wove himself: and, finally, he submitted to new massages and very severe fasts. He soon appeared smaller, thinner; his chest slumped; the gutter at the nape of his neck became more pronounced; his earthy cheeks, mottled with freckles, had the pallor of corpses; his flat, pointed, ape-like head became repugnant. One afternoon, Juan Thom happily discovered that he weighed less than 45 kilos. At Señor Gustavo’s tavern, all the talk was of the “Grand Prix.” Marta herself seemed excited, as if it were more than a matter of interest, a question of self-respect. Every night, after dinner with Thom, the couple would talk for a while. Señor Gustavo, so as not to get in their way, would pick up a newspaper and sit at the other end of the establishment. “God’s thunder!” he thought, “it’s good that the boys get used to each other.” A few days before the races, Marta was more effusive, “more of a woman” than ever. “My father,” he said, “has seen Cromwell and is enthusiastic; he likes him more than Rick.” And he added confidentially, lowering his voice: “I think that, instead of fifteen thousand francs, he’s going to bet twenty thousand; all he has. If he were to say anything to you, I beg you not to take it for granted.” The jockey nodded; he was entranced; that innocent entreaty had seemed sweet to him as a caress. He, for his part, poured out his heart on Marthe. “I’ll also bet Cromwell all my savings: thirty thousand francs. It’s not much … but… I have no more!” She affectionately called him “ambitious.” With fifty thousand francs and a little order, they could open a tavern, or a little shop selling ladies’ hats, and live quietly. “I,” she concluded, “learned the milliner’s trade as a child, and I like it very much. ” Listening to her, Juan Thom half-closed his eyelids, feeling that happiness is best seen with one’s eyes closed. Then, timidly: “Why don’t we go to Spain, to a village…? Oh! I so long to live in the country…” Marta interrupted him, and in the dry indifference of her gesture there was great cruelty. “No, that’s not it. I don’t like the country; don’t think about it. I don’t want to leave Paris.” When Juan Thom left, the young woman accompanied him to the door. “Goodbye, Marta; I’ll come back early tomorrow. ” “Goodbye, Monsieur Thom.” He walked away, turning his head every two or three steps, and she waved to him. At the end of the street there was a lamppost, beyond which the tavern was already out of sight. The jockey knew it and stopped there. The light fell evenly upon him, giving a milky halo to his mean and ridiculous figure. Marta smiled. Little Thom had never seemed so ugly to her. Chapter 10. Juan Thom looked at his watch; eight o’clock, time for dinner. Without wasting a moment, he carefully closed the mirrored wardrobe and looked around, making sure that everything inside his neat bachelor’s office was clean and tidy. In the reception, he picked up his hat, which he usually placed firmly on his occipital bone, as he did at the racetracks with his light jockey cap, and left. He began to descend. the stairs; his feet, shod in patent leather boots, spindly feet, small as a child’s, delicately touched the carpeted steps. Upon reaching the entrance, he was handed a red card with gold trim, smelling of heliotrope. On the russet, satiny background of the cardboard, a woman’s name appeared in white letters, in the finest English script : Anne-Marie. “This card,” said the concierge, “must have been brought by the interested party herself. Do you know her? ” The jockey shrugged, naive and disdainful. “I don’t remember. ” “Come on, Mr. Thom, don’t be a hypocrite.” At the smiling concierge’s malicious suggestion, the diminutive Thom offered a skeptical and sad gesture. “You know very well that little women don’t concern me.” “I know, Mr. Thom…” And as she acknowledged this, the good woman, who had borne several children, sighed and looked at her tenant with that sincere pity that men who have reached old age without being loved inspire in mothers of families. She added: “If you want to wait for that lady… she said she’d be right back, would you be so good as to wait a little…” Juan Thom examined the card, perplexed, with that idiotic air that the countenance of a man acquires when he has been given a book to read written in a language he doesn’t understand. “I don’t know…” he murmured, sighing. “I don’t know… What if she takes a while?” At that moment , a tall, blond, beautiful woman entered the doorway, filling it with the fragrant and cheerful rustling of her skirts. Her beauty was imposing and striking, beneath the undulating, artistically intricate brim of an enormous white hat. A salmon-colored blouse with transparent lace sleeves tightly hugged her magnificent bust, at once supple and pompous. She had large blue eyes and a short nose; on the oval of her fleshy face, “made up” like an actress’s, her lips, exaggeratedly retouched with lipstick, painted a bloody carnation. She advanced resolutely, certain of pleasing. “Mr. Thom?” ” Your servant. ” “This afternoon I had the honor of leaving you my card… I wished to speak with you. ” “I am at your service, madam; if you would take the trouble to come up to my room…” She examined him curiously, surprised that this little man, who at the racetracks seemed to have Fortune at his knees, could be, seen up close, so mean and ugly. “No,” she said, “we can take a walk: my automobile will take us wherever you like.” They left. Ana María’s automobile was waiting at the nearest corner; A superb yellow Renault, thrashing and menacing in the red halo of its lit headlights. The young woman climbed in first, and as she placed her foot on the running board, her entire splendid body swayed for a long, voluptuous moment. Juan Thom sat next to her; his feet barely touched the ground. In the spaciousness of the vehicle, the little jockey, with his thin, anemic face and his hat pulled down to his neck, gave the impression of a sick child. Ana María’s Renault rolled silently and slowly on its thick tires. “Where are you going?” the young woman asked. “I don’t care,” Thom replied politely; “you drive. ” “No… because I wouldn’t want to upset whatever plan you had for the evening. Haven’t you had dinner yet? ” “No, ma’am. ” “Would you like to have dinner with me?” The jockey was about to answer in the affirmative, but the image of Marta, with her large, honest eyes, suddenly revived in his memory, and the recollection intimidated and disturbed him like an accusation. He began to stammer: “With pleasure… yes… but… I’ve made a commitment… a family, with whom I have no confidence, is waiting for me, and…” The adventuress understood; the only thing that can separate a man from a woman is another woman… and she smiled, finding it very comical that little Thom should be in love. “It doesn’t matter,” she said; “another night will happen. Where are they waiting for you?” “On the rue de… It’s very far; beyond Neuilly… ” “It doesn’t matter; for automobiles, distances are limitless.” Her slender, white, richly bejeweled fingers tapped frivolously on the vehicle’s front windows. The chauffeur turned his head, and his black eyes, full of youthful vehemence, looked boldly at the young woman, as if they still held the impression of having seen her naked once… on a dull night perhaps… Ana María shouted: “Toward the Porte Maillot!” Then, turning confidentially to the jockey, she added: “What I need to tell you will be said soon; I believe we shall come to an understanding…” She quickly demonstrated her knowledge of her interlocutor’s artistic history over the past two years. Jean Thom smiled, astonished and pleased. She mentioned the names of famous horses, spoke to him about Rick and his most notable successes; Her easy conversation, in which she familiarly tossed around the names of famous jockeys and sportsmen, proved that Anne-Marie was perfectly familiar with the intimate life of the racetracks. Horse racing exasperated her, and she had squandered and remade her fortune there several times. This foolish passion snatched her away from her more generous lovers, who left her, tired of wasting money. The previous year she had lost nearly half a million francs. She also spoke of Cromwell. “The main purpose of my visit,” she added, “is to know, but with absolute certainty, whether you are sure of triumphing with Cromwell in the forthcoming Grand Prix races.” Jean Thom’s face suddenly assumed a closed, impenetrable expression. “I cannot,” he said, “give your question any concrete answer. All jockeys compete on the turf in absolute good faith; You know… We do all we can, all we know… but having “the hope” of winning is not the same as having “the certainty” of winning… Ana María interrupted him with a quiet, soft smile, caressing like the touch of velvet. “All those are ‘words…'” Mr. Thom, “and I am not satisfied with so little. I need and deserve to know more. Be frank; don’t be afraid. I am the mistress of the Marquis de Laverie… the owner of Cromwell. ” The sharp surprise that contorted the jockey’s features drew a new smile on Ana María’s crimson, lasciviously promising lips . “You see,” he concluded, “that you are not dealing with a stranger. ” He continued speaking in that persuasive, soft voice—a bedroom voice—rich in fainting and cadences of love, which gave such high and penetrating merit to his words. She was determined to stake her entire savings on the next races: one hundred and fifty thousand francs. But which of the two main runners? Cromwell… Rick? She had taken the jockey’s lean, hard right hand in her tiny, slender hands.
“Put aside for a moment your pride as a jockey,” she murmured, ” I know I’m asking a lot… Artists, and you are one, are artists before they are men… But don’t forget that, if you are good to me, I will know how to be very indulgent and very generous with you…” She paused to look at him straight in the eye, and in her long blue pupils there was an infinity of love. Little Thom trembled and his freckled cheeks colored slightly. She stammered: “Go on… ” “I need to know,” continued Anne-Marie, “whether Rick was invincible because you were riding him, or if, on the contrary, you were invincible because you were riding Rick.” If the former, I’m betting on Cromwell; if the latter, I’m betting on Rick. She had encircled Thom’s slender neck with one of her half-naked arms and was drawing him towards her, offering him support and generous relief in the ampulosity of her magnificent, fragrant breast. Distraught, John Thom was about to condemn Rick, but he checked himself. “Rick,” he said, “is worth a lot. ” “And will he win? ” “No, miss. Cromwell will win.” “Why? ” “And why do you want to know the reason?… Be content with being sure that victory will be mine… ours…” And suddenly, as if in a hurry to break the sensual spell the young woman was enveloping him in, he added: “I have a girlfriend, miss… and my girlfriend, whom I plan to marry this summer, is gambling her entire dowry on Cromwell.” This confession changed the course of the conversation, as if from that moment on, the image of Marta had settled between the two interlocutors, separating them. It was a loyal, intimate conversation, without a hint of sensuality, between two friends who join together to make a good deal. “Will we win, Mr. Thom? ” “We will win, miss; don’t doubt it.” The automobile stopped. She asked: “Are we there?” The jockey looked through the glass and recognized that lamppost from where Marta’s tavern was lost to sight. “Yes,” he replied, “we are here.” He got out of the vehicle, and his skeletal hands cordially clasped the affectionate little hands of Anne-Marie. The young woman exclaimed: “After the Grand Prix, look for me. I want your best wedding gift to be mine. ” Chapter 11. The evening arrived when the best horses in Europe were going to compete for the 100,000 franc Grand Prix. A cosmopolitan and aristocratic crowd filled the enormous perimeter of Longchamps: the avenues leading to the racetrack trembled under the fleeting wheels of thousands of carriages; automobiles and vehicles à la Dumont thundered through the Bois with the acerbic clamor of their trumpets; the light-colored dresses of the women in their Sunday best painted cheerful red and white patches against the green background of the trees; an immense murmur of voices filled the space; the light was blinding; in the blue sky, the tricolor flags fluttered, shining jubilantly under the dazzling caress of the sun. That morning’s press had stirred the spirits of the racetrack-going crowd. Several newspapers, including Le Journal, were betting on Rick and recalling his story; that undefeated history for which he deserved to be called “the first horse of France.” On the other hand, Les Sports voted for Cromwell and published his portrait. This roused the public, and on the Longchamps turf the bets multiplied, equaling each other. In front of the President of the Republic’s box, and under the avid gaze of the elegant world in the stands, the horses paced restlessly, looking at each other with suspicious yet burning eyes, waiting half-assuredly and half-angry for the moment of combat. Along the rope, the crowd pressed impatiently, elbowing each other, curiously rising on tiptoe. Atop the carriages that occupied the center of the turf, a multitude of white and vermilion umbrellas swayed; The breeze, as it swayed the women’s fine spring dresses around their bodies, drew indiscreet, showy flourishes. Cromwell’s appearance was greeted with thunderous applause by a group of Englishmen. John Thom, impassive beneath his red cap, cast a look of indifference and disdain over those thousands of heads, and barely responded to the comforting smile that Martha and her father cast at him from the podium. His tiny legs, tucked into tight white knitted breeches, pressed as if in a constricted position against the horse’s proud back; his limp chest hunched within the prestige of his bloody blouse, whose scorching color exaggerated the yellowish emaciation of his face. John Thom was sad. In those last few days, and much to his chagrin, he had thought a lot about Rick: he remembered how his beloved horse, on the eve of the big races, would seem impatient, startled, as if bitten by a presentiment. It was then that he would stroke him, say friendly words, explain that he was in love with Marta and that he absolutely needed to marry her. But that strange and sweet union passed, and those who had been like brothers, now, By a clownish twist of fate, they were enemies. A terrible problem gripped the jockey’s soul at such moments. “If I win the race,” he thought, “I’ll marry Marta and secure my future, my happiness. But if Cromwell wins, Rick, who is my past, my history, and also my present—for what I am is nothing more than a reflection of what I was—will be dishonored… and will no longer be considered “the best horse in the world…” And, for the first time, within the brilliant soul of Juan Thom, the artist and the man found themselves face to face. The French, who were displeased to see their favorite jockey fighting France on an English horse, hurled insults at him; and little Thom, impassive and pale as a wax doll, considered that those who accused him were right and that the fight he was about to undertake under the auspices of the British flag was a lack of patriotism. From the first grandstand, Ana María, splendid, striking amidst the snow on her hat and lace, greeted him, reminding him of his promise. A group of runners approached. Behind them rode Rick, solitary, restless, isolated from everyone by his powerful personality. Upon seeing his former jockey, the noble horse whinnied, and his strange whinny seemed to say that that afternoon the glorious history of one of the two would be cut short. Juan Thom’s eyes filled with tears. The jockeys had already been weighed. The race was about to begin. The starter , the field judge, and the finisher took their places. The spectators crowded along the track, standing on tiptoe, craning their necks, not wanting to miss a single detail of that brief and magnificent moment of the “start.” In the green expanse of the racetrack, the crowd swayed like an immense wave. The moment had arrived. The jockeys, some dressed in yellow, others in blue, green, or red, tried to tame the fleeting impatience of their mounts and bring them into line. But the operation was difficult, because the fiery animals did not know how to stay still. Little by little, however, they were gradually reduced to obedience. Finally, there came a moment when the starter believed they were well formed. Then a bell rang: the horses set off… At first, they all advanced together, forming a terrible, palpitating mass . They ran with their bellies close to the ground, their nostrils swollen with anger, their bodies elongated and as if dislocated in a tetanic contortion of all their muscles. The jockeys, standing in their stirrups to reduce their weight, encouraged them by attacking them viciously with their spurs and beating them with their lead-filled whips. But they soon began to pull away: one of them, as he started, swung too far forward and rolled on the grass; another, whose rider tried to play along with a companion, lost his way and was out of the fight. The others continued. Soon Rick, who had taken the lead, took the lead, fleeing with that powerful, calm run of his, like the flight of an eagle. Beside him rode Cromwell, less robust than his enemy, but as courageous and ardent as Al Borak, the fairy mare that carried Mohammed, in the space of a night, from Mecca to Medina… The fight between the two animals, true models of energy and will, was astonishing. In the second third of the race, John Thom, who had limited himself to preventing Rick from getting ahead of him, rose in his stirrups and began to furiously whip his mount’s haunches; his spurs crossed the throbbing hindquarters of the red-lined animal. Cromwell, inflamed with the rage of pain, outdoing himself, advanced further… further… For a few seconds, Cromwell and Rick fought without gaining an advantage, and their jockeys felt the magnetic heat of the thousands of harassing glances that pursued them. A magnificent moment. They were pale, sweaty, panting, half-suffocated in the suffocating speed of the race. Finally, and under Thom’s tireless whip, Cromwell He advanced… he advanced slowly… like an eagle flying at low altitude … A tremendous cry thundered through the air. “Rick loses!” cried thousands of voices. “Rick loses!” France was going to be defeated; the English applauded. Juan Thom looked out of the corner of his eye and saw his horse’s beloved head by his knee, which seemed to be crying, bidding him farewell forever, in the irremediable shame of defeat. That intelligent and desperate look pierced the jockey’s soul; Jean Thom thought what he was doing was wrong , because it was going to ruin Rick’s long history of triumph, and Rick was not responsible for Anne Marie wanting to rebuild her fortune, or for his having fallen in love with Martha, or for Martha’s dowry being so small… Once again the artist had defeated the man, and then Jean forgot himself , his love, his thirty thousand francs… and throwing himself out of the saddle he let out that strange, guttural yell that made Rick invincible. The two runners were heading for the distance marker, planted a hundred meters before reaching the finish line. “Gruuuuu!” shouted the jockey, “gruuuuuuu!” And Rick, beside himself, gulped down the bridle and leaped, leaving Cromwell behind, thus angrily dragging along the ground, as if he were a dead body, the entire future of Jean Thom. However, that afternoon, upon returning from Longchamps amidst the curiosity of the crowd that looked at him with a touch of pity, little Thom’s sad brow was noble and haughty like a king’s. Madrid.–May, 1909. THE NECKLACE Chapter 12. The first act had ended, and Enrique Darlés, driven by his provincial curiosity, went down to the foyer. He wanted to quickly assimilate the great and motley soul of the city, to see many things, to affirm his personality in the face of the renewal of so many new emotions, to feel how all of Madrid was passing beneath the soles of his wandering shoes. Moments before, from his vulgar seat in “paradise,” the Teatro Real, with its wide stalls and its boxes flooded with the dazzling drizzle of hundreds of electric lamps, had offered itself to him like a rare garden; a sort of enormous bouquet where the diamond-like ribbons adorning feminine throats seemed to linger like drops of dew on monstrous petals of silk, jeweled velvet, and bare skin. The intensity of this spectacle was so captivating that he barely managed to notice what the orchestra and the performers were saying. The visual impressions overwhelmed all other emotions in his mind, and he watched without satiation. That human penitent exhaled a strange fragrance, a lulling and sensual vapor of essences of hay, jasmine, moss, and Parmesan violets, of well-washed flesh, of fine underwear. And in the background of the luminous tableau, resplendent like an operetta apotheosis, the women, with their wicker figures, their shameless shoulders exposed to the analytical voracity of the twins, their smiling faces, embellished by that placidity of expression that comes with wealth, their carefully coiffed little heads, their bejeweled hands, which moved feathered fans before the gauzy necklines… Eager to examine this world up close, Enrique Darlés went down to the foyer. There he paused, a little ashamed of himself. For the first time, he found his outmoded bowler hat, his little black suit that gave him the appearance of a seminarian, his old and badly polished brodequins ridiculous. His flowing tie, tied with student negligence, was also ugly. Around them passed men properly dressed, in elegant tailcoats with flowery lapels and frock coats of impeccable severity, and ladies who majestically dragged the whiteness of their moiré and grosgrain skirts along the soft, vermilion carpet. It was a masterful symphony of silks, brocades, sumptuous furs, of fine legs glimpsed behind the perverse mystery of openwork stockings, of splendid ornaments and jingling bracelets, whose Charms repeated the song of their gold on the ermine-like softness of his forearms. Stunned, unable to justify his presence there, Darlés advanced to examine a bust of Gayarre; a bronze bust, with short, unruly hair and an energetic attitude, reminiscent of Otello. A hand rested familiarly on his shoulder. The young man turned his face. “Don Manuel! What a surprise!” He was a gentleman of medium height, robust and a little bald. He looked about fifty. A curly, abundant blond beard covered his swollen, happy cheeks, flushed with blood. He wore a frock coat. On his short, wide, epicurean nose, a pair of gold spectacles trembled. “Boy!” he exclaimed, “are you here?” Very red-faced, without knowing why, Enrique replied, “I’ve come to see this…” Unconsciously, with that respect we as children learned to have for our parents’ friends, he had taken off his hat, which he was holding with both hands at chest level. Besides, Don Manuel was a member of parliament. But the distinguished man forced him to cover his head. “And what are you doing in Madrid? ” “Studying. ” “Law? ” “No, sir: medicine. ” “A good career! What year are you in? ” “Preparatory.” He smiled embarrassedly. He realized that his answers were too laconic and that he didn’t know how to speak; and he experienced more strongly than before the vexatious sensation of being badly dressed. Don Manuel looked around him, and his expression was impertinent and casual. Every now and then he murmured, “I’m waiting for someone…” Then he resumed his flirtation with the student, questioning him about his father and the town chief. Invariably, to each new question, Enrique Darlés answered: “Everything’s the same, everyone’s still fine…” And the conversation was interrupted again. Don Manuel asked: “You live in a boarding house, right? ” “No, sir. ” “How so?” ” I’ve rented a small, third-floor, interior apartment on Calle de la Ballesta, which rents me thirteen pesetas a month, and there’s a tavern on the same street. ” “I see you know how to live; that way you’ll save yourself the trouble with landladies. Once you get to know Madrid well, no one will make you return to the village. Madrid is very beautiful. Here, with money, a clever man has a great time.” In that confidential tone that fools and boasters adopt to admire individuals they consider inferior, Don Manuel added: “Look: you’re not a child; I, what the devil!… haven’t reached old age either; therefore, since that friend I was expecting isn’t coming, we can talk freely.” I… do you understand?… have… a headache … Enrique nodded. “Alicia Pardo, do you know her? ” “No, sir. ” “She’s very popular among the good-humored aristocracy. A splendid beauty. At the Casino we call her ‘Little Gold Cup.'” Suddenly the expression on his features changed: his eyes shone greedily and happily; the congested color in his cheeks deepened, and he turned around, stroking his beard and adjusting his top hat on his forehead, with the petulance of a fool who imagines himself admired. The sharp, sustained ringing of bells announced that the second act was about to begin. The spectators were flowing back into the hall, and in the solitude of the foyer, under the white light of the electric spotlights , Gayarre’s bust seemed taller. Don Manuel exclaimed: “Follow me; I’ll introduce you to my friend.” And, referring to the student’s terrified look, he added: “It doesn’t matter that your dress isn’t formal. You’ll stay in the antechamber.” He began to walk with a firm step, concerned with giving his movements youthful ease and flexibility. Without answering a word, Enrique Darlés followed him, simultaneously joyful and troubled. They entered a stall. Don Manuel murmured: “Good, eh? See you later; you can hear everything from here. ” Enrique didn’t reply; the performance had begun, and in the hieratic silence of the hall the chorus of one of those sweet operas triumphed. Italians, laden, for all of us, with childhood memories. Darlés lightly lifted one of the heavy curtains that protected the antechamber. With her back to him, leaning on the railing of the stalls, stood a young woman, dressed in white. Her firm hips undulated lasciviously beneath the childish slenderness of her waist; her shoulders were round and harmonious; against the snow of her bare neck, her blond, almost red hair feigned leonine hues; two enormous emeralds trembled, like drops of absinthe, on the rosy lobes of her tiny ears. Enrique Darlés noticed that Don Manuel and Alicia were exchanging a few words. Immediately afterward, she turned her head with a curious, graceful movement, and the student’s eyes met with the collision of two large, green, and luminous pupils, like lively emeralds. It was a brief, but inquisitive and penetrating glance, which resolved itself into an expression of disdain. Trembling, his cheeks flushed, Darlés let the curtain fall and went to take refuge at the back of the antechamber. At first, he wanted to flee, but then he changed his mind, feeling that leaving without saying goodbye was inappropriate. He thought she was annoyed, but in reality, he was afraid. Nevertheless, he waited. Slowly, the musical spell of the opera invaded him, freeing him from his own conscience. One of those romantic poems was developing, completely lyrical, where the figures are everything: the atmosphere, the frame surrounding the characters, the objective, did not exist there. Wails of distress trembled above the soft, harmonious wailing of the cellos; The high-pitched violins echoed cries of rebellion and arpeggios of pride, and above the orchestral poem, rich, protean, multiform, like a soul, the tenor’s voice rose, persuasive and warm, tearing itself apart in an inconsolable lament. Enrique stood up again and timidly parted the curtains of the antechamber. His movement went unnoticed. Alicia stood with her back to him, suspended in the fateful spell of the performance, and her emotion pretended to slide a shiver of pink flesh between her shoulder blades . Around her hair, the intense white reflection of the hall lit up a iridescent halo. Suddenly, Enrique Darlés trembled; before, the young woman’s eyes had seemed like two emeralds to him, and now the emeralds that shone beneath the flame of her hair, he believed, were looking at him like two pupils. But this absurd idea lasted only a short time; The orchestra languished in a mournful ritornello, and throughout the central motif, the musical phrases cascaded in abundance, sliding in chromatic scales, from treble to the lowest tones, reaching out, flagellating, and then merging into a chord of immense anguish. And in that grandiose threnody, there were the swoops of disillusionment and the pangs of hope, weariness and longing, grimaces and laughter; life, in short, tragic and slithering, writhing in the bitterness of all that was and will be. Enrique sat down again; a nameless sorrow constricted his throat, and he felt a pang of tears. His past and present flashed through his mind in a swift, cinematic vision. His father was old and owned a pharmacy that barely earned him enough to live; and he, having completed his medical studies, would have to return to the village, monotonous and odious. There, working to repay his parents for all he had received from them, his youth would wither away; his dreams of love, his artistic curiosity, the finest part of his soul would be buried there. Then he would marry and have children; after that… his existence traced a very long, straight path, without undulations or ups and downs, lost in the monotony of a desert. To know what will become of us in ten, twenty, thirty years—is there anything more horrible? The poor student tore at his hair, and his eyes filled with tears. He would have liked to be rich, to have no family, and to find himself exposed to the poetically generous claws of the unexpected. Undoubtedly, the blood of conquerors and valiant adventurers ran through his veins. who performed illustrious deeds and died in distant climates, and that warlike lineage left in him, along with their love of danger, the infinite melancholy of approaching old age without having done anything different from what all men do every day. To finish a costly, boring, and difficult career, only to later earn a living, a wife, and a corner: a poor house where there are so many palaces, a love where so many passions beat, a miserable wage next to so many fortunes… And, stirred by the music, Enrique Darlés’s absurd grief burst into sobs. The second act ended, and Don Manuel and Alicia Pardo entered the antechamber. Upon seeing Darlés, the young woman’s talkative green eyes filled with surprise. “What? Were you crying?” Before the student could answer, she repeated, addressing her friend: “Don’t you think so? I was crying!” Enrique, deeply embarrassed, said: “I don’t know… I was distracted. But, yes… it’s possible…” She replied, smiling: “You have a girlfriend, right? ” “No… no, miss. ” “So?” “It’s just that always… nonsense!… without knowing why, like hysterical women , music, even bad music, makes me sad. ” “That’s strange! Not me.” Don Manuel, sanguine and massive, indicated with a lift of his square shoulders that it was of no importance, and introduced them; and Enrique felt in his ardent right hand the cold, soft hand—snow and velvet—of “Tacita de Oro.” Then the three of them settled themselves on the same couch. Alicia was placed between the two men. Don Manuel took out his hip flask. “Do you want some?” he said. “Thank you very much. ” “Good boy!” exclaimed the representative; “he has no vices.” Alicia questioned: “What, you don’t smoke?” “No, miss… ” “You’re certainly strange! Well, I smoke.” Enrique Darlés lowered his eyes, blushing again. He understood that this detail aggravated the ridiculousness of his outfit; women, generally, like men who smoke; for them, tobacco is usually the best perfume. He felt a movement of rage towards himself; gladly, to recover before Alicia, he would have finished, one after the other, all the cigarettes, Egyptian or Turkish, that Don Manuel had in his pouch; but it was too late; the opportunity, that great enchantment that gives merit and grace to all things, had passed. The young woman, with perfectly English nonchalance, had crossed one leg over the other and was smoking calmly, leaning against the dark back of the divan. This time, around her diabolical hair, the cigarette smoke, rising slowly in the stillness of the atmosphere, wove a bluish halo. Darlés watched her, albeit out of the corner of his eye. Her face was aquiline , her nose turned up, her mouth bloody and cruel; beneath her small, hard forehead, filled with selfish instincts, her long green eyes gazed with authority and annoyance: it was a cold, piercing, probing expression, revealing no mercy. A string of tiny pearls encircled her soft, rosy throat; her pointed-nailed fingers burned beneath the flame of her rings. In the eurythmy of her sculpture, in the harmonious rhythm of her attitudes, in all the details and profiles of that adorable doll, Enrique Darlés, despite his provincial innocence, divined an egotistical soul, one of those emotionless, self-absorbed wills that never felt melancholy. Don Manuel, with the petulant good humor of healthy, wealthy men, possessed of a beautiful woman, exclaimed: “So, tell me, Enrique: what do you think of my ‘Little Gold Cup’?” I bet you haven’t seen a face like that in our town? And she added triumphantly: “Besides, it doesn’t cost me much. When we met, I asked her: “What do you want from me?” And she answered: “A subscription to a stall at the Real.” No small feat! 1,300 or so pesetas for fourteen performances. And here we are. The poor thing isn’t demanding.” Darles didn’t reply to the deputy’s words; she was prevented from doing so by the emotion, the novelty of that world, of which she had no knowledge, even of its references; a derailed and amoral world where, as in art, only beauty has a price, and where there are calculating women who give themselves for a stage seat. Alicia Pardo, meanwhile, observed Enrique, and the rectilinear frankness of his gaze had a disconcerting ease. She had been interested in his youthfulness , the ingenuity of his responses, the Apollonian correctness of his features, the obsidian tones of his curly southern hair , the black bravery of his burning and curious eyes in the ephebic smoothness of his face, easy to blush; and more than all this, the emotion of that artistic spirit from whom music brought tears. Alicia, who had only seen men cry out of jealousy, or for even baser and more vile reasons, found in Enrique Darles’s weeping something exquisite and stupendous. And the thought crossed her little mind, full of curiosity, that it would be very strange and very sweet to let herself be loved by such a boy. Suddenly she exclaimed: “And you, what are you doing in Madrid? ” “Studying… ” “Oh, right!… A student…” The protagonist of a novel I read a long time ago, and which I liked very much, was also a student. What a coincidence, isn’t it? ” Darlés, overcome by the childish simplicity of the observation, nodded in the affirmative. “Tacita de oro” continued: “How old are you? ” ” Twenty. ” “No lie? ” “No lie. Why?… Do I look older? ” “On the contrary. You look less. I’m going to be nineteen, and I look older.” Don Manuel had unfolded a newspaper and was reading the stock market section. Alicia Pardo wanted to know Darlés’s name. “Enrique!” she repeated; “What a beautiful name!” She became absorbed, remembering that all the Enriques she had known—and there were many—had been sympathetic to her. And so, going back in time, she came to the years of her childhood; serene years, spent in the Virgilian tranquility of a village, and she thought she saw in Darlés, healthy, innocent, and tanned by the provincial sun, something of what she herself had been. Beside himself, enraptured and open-mouthed, the student also contemplated her, like someone examining a very excellent work of art. In the aisles resounded an unusual clatter of footsteps; several bells rang; a wave of spectators invaded the stalls. The third act was about to begin. Alicia and Don Manuel stood up. “Are you staying?” the deputy asked Darlés. “No; thank you very much.” ” Why?” “Because… I need to go to bed early. Tomorrow I have to get up early.” He was so certain that Alicia could love him, and such was the indigestion this certainty produced in him that he needed to be alone to enjoy it better. Don Manuel added: “As you wish. Whenever you want to see me, better than at my house, where I am never, go to Alicia’s. You will find me there in the afternoons, from six to eight. ” They said goodbye. As they left the box, Enrique Darlés turned his head, and his eyes and those of Alicia Pardo met, caressing each other, as if giving each other a kiss and a date. It was one of those terrible, life-altering glances that men often receive in their youth and then stay with them all their lives. Chapter 13. Alicia spent the afternoon at her house reading a book before the fire in the fireplace. Don Manuel had come to see her; they argued, and she sent him away. She was extremely nervous; She felt like crying, yawning, tearing her hair out, and kicking the toy makers from whose fragile glass shelves the dolls, porcelain figurines, and bizarrely shaped bibelots showed her their mischievous faces. It is essential to have been bored at least once in order to understand all the darkness, all the silence, all the horror of the bottomless abyss or the tunnel without exit that boredom holds. And yet, just as death is the origin of life, so boredom is often the beginning of action. Sometimes great boredom has the vigor of a great will. Out of boredom, Many men of libertine youth were in their mature years the mirrors of their husbands, and by applying themselves later to business, they died millionaires. Boredom also produces works of art; Byron and Heine, if they hadn’t been extremely bored, would never have reached the heights of poetry. Although very young, Alicia Pardo already suffered from this illness; an illness of stillness that blurs boundaries and extinguishes contrasts. She was never in love, and the selfishness of her lovers ended up giving her soul, little inclined to tenderness, adamantine hardnesses. “I can no longer love anyone,” she would say; ” I became a man… ” Then, since the spirit cannot be idle, she loved luxury; she was neither greedy nor thrifty, but she did enjoy expensive dresses , flashy hats, and fine stones where the sun’s rays had turned into crystal. Living, in her opinion, meant buying good furniture, wearing new clothes, showing off, and spending without restraint; In her pretty hands, alternately begging and spendthrift, the money was melting away. She had plenty and needed more, and as she quickly grew bored with what she had acquired, her wealth didn’t increase. That afternoon the young woman was furious; she didn’t know what to do; she had little money, and that morning she had seen many pretty frivolous things in a bazaar. She had picked up a book to amuse herself, but she couldn’t find it; her restlessness persisted. Why not be infinitely rich? And she found this poor life clownish, where men consider themselves fortunate to possess one ten-millionth of what they want. When Enrique Darlés arrived, it was almost seven o’clock. Upon seeing the student, Alicia heaved a sigh of satisfaction and threw the book into the fire. “What are you doing?” cried Darlés, for whom every book was something sacred. She replied: “Almost nothing. It’s a stupid novel; with all the boring stuff we find, we ought to do the same. ” Enrique sat down. “And Don Manuel?” “He was here for a while and then left. Or rather, I said goodbye to him. I assure you, I’m unbearable; I’d like to argue with everyone; I wouldn’t give anything to experience a strong emotion. I’m desperate. It’s nerves, cursed nerves, stirring up everything evil and vile that lies dormant within us. Today is one of those dark days when the well-being of our friends makes us unhappy. ” She interrupted herself to examine Darlés, who, with her bearded face, her southern eyes, and her curly black hair, seemed as interesting and sweet as a page. “I’m strange,” she continued, “fickle, ungrateful, incapable of putting lasting passion into anything. That’s why you caught my attention from the first moment : because you were passionate. Good or bad, I like radical characters , wills of iron.” As for those lukewarm and balanced temperaments that know how to adapt to everything, I compare them to mid-season suits, which always make us feel ill, for if in summer they keep us warmer than necessary, in winter they protect us much less than necessary. Timidly, Enrique Darlés dared to say: “And where does your displeasure come from? ” “I don’t know. ” “How? ” “What you hear. Unless…” He stopped, scrutinizing himself, and continued: “My words surprise you, because you are very young. When you are older and with them more worldly experience, you will understand that the origin of any of these minuscule setbacks that embitter our existence cannot be referred to concrete facts, but rather we must recognize them as the sum or corollary of our history, of everything we have lived through. Now, for example, we feel sad because before we were sad or we were happy.” There are, then, in our present tears the bitterness of old tears and also the weariness of past laughter. Do you understand?… Don’t be surprised, then, that I don’t know specifically why I’m in such a bad mood today. He stopped, sinking into a thought that opened a vertical crease over his graceful brow. Then he said: “Do you often pass by Main Street? ” “Many times.” “Do you remember a jewelry store on the right, on the even-numbered sidewalk, near Puerta del Sol?” The student nodded. “Well, if you like jewelry,” Alicia continued, “look at the emerald necklace in the center of the window. Today, by chance, I saw it, and it made such a great impression on me that I can’t forget it. It’s magnificent, not only because of the size and clear orient of the stones, but also because of their setting. ” “It must be worth a lot…” “Fifteen thousand pesetas. ” Darlés didn’t reply, and his eyebrows arched in admiration. In his provincial simplicity, those figures, enormous for the pitiful smallness of his purse, inspired bewilderment and panic. “Tacita de oro” continued: “I told Manolo about it…”; but Manolo is a cunning fox, a miser, whom there’s no way to involve in extraordinary expenses.” This also contributed to our quarreling… Believe me , it’s the men’s fault that we aren’t more faithful. Although innocent in matters of feminine psychology, Henry understood that Alice’s crooked humor must have been related to that much-admired and beloved emerald necklace. An unsatisfied desire is like undigested food: at first it causes us a vague discomfort, which then increases , until indigestion erupts. Using this simile, one might say that a pain is “the indigestion” of a whim. Ingeniously, without calculating that it is indiscreet to promise anything to either women or children, Henry exclaimed: “If only I were rich!” There was a novelistic pause, one of those silences during which women make up their minds to do anything. Abruptly, with that same bored expression with which she had thrown the book she was reading into the fire a few moments before, Alice abandoned one of her tiny hands between the bony hands of the student, trembling with emotion. “Do you like my hands?” she asked. “Extraordinarily so. ” “They say they are large. ” “On the contrary, they are very small. ” She examined with rapture the morbid fineness of the wrist; the capricious lines that the blue veins traced beneath the whiteness of the skin; the dimples that adorned the first joint of the fingers; dancer’s fingers, ostentatiously adorned, and ending in triangular, pink nails. Alice looked at her rings; in the shuttles, sapphires, bloodthirsty rubies, topazes, diamonds made of light, formed bouquets of tiny, unfading flowers. “When you pass by Main Street,” the young woman insisted, “examine carefully the necklace I told you about. There are two necklaces in the window: one of black pearls, and another of emeralds. I am referring to the second; you will see it a little to the left, on a white velvet half-bust.” The sight of the precious green stones revived in her memory with obsessive tenacity and, as it filled her spirit, exercised a dangerous centripetal tyranny over all her ideas. It was eight o’clock, and Enrique Darlés stood up. “Are you leaving?” Alice asked. “Yes; I’m going to dinner.” She looked him up and down and found him slender, with an almost childlike beauty, in his modest little black suit. Then she thought that this evening, when she had nothing to do, was going to be horribly ruined. “Why don’t you have dinner with me?” she said. “Why? ” “What a question! So we don’t part so soon.” “I… well, as you wish…; but I’d be sorry to disturb you… ” “What a fool! On the contrary. Your conversation will distract me. You’ll see how soon I recover my good humor.” She rose with a quick, springy movement that made her skirts rustle and spread the strong scent of violets around her. She rang a bell. A chambermaid appeared . “Tell Eleanor,” cried Alice, “that I have a guest. Master Henry is dining with me . ” She went to a mirror to arrange her hair. She seemed happy, transfigured. “Have you seen,” she said, “the play they performed last night at the Princesa?” “No. ” “I’ve been assured it’s very handsome. Do you want to go see it? There’s still time; we’ll have dinner right away.” A little disconcerted, Enrique Darlés surreptitiously felt his waistcoat pockets, checking his money, and mentally counted: “five pesetas, ten, fifteen…” There was enough to buy two seats and, upon leaving the theater, take a carriage. “As you wish,” he replied, now more reassured. “Then I’m going to change my suit. I’ll leave immediately.” He disappeared behind the crimson curtain that covered the door of his bedroom, and then the student heard a cheerful rustle of underwear falling to the floor, of corset ties rustling over a wicker bust, of silk laces hastily undone, and of wardrobes forcefully opening and closing. Enrique Darlés was both startled and pleased. He had known Alicia for over a month . During this time, always under the pretext of seeing Don Manuel, he visited the young woman several times, but never, despite the intimacy of these encounters, did he dare to let his love be known. In his innocence, he couldn’t muster the brains of such a difficult conversion. And when Alicia, sensing his anxiety, wanted to help him by giving the conversation a confidential tone, he dodged any declaration, afraid of formulating it awkwardly and seeming ridiculous. But now he felt calmer, more in control of himself. Without knowing why, he suspected that Alicia’s bad mood benefited him. She kept him by her side because she was annoyed, because she feared spending the night alone with the biting image of that emerald necklace that would probably never be hers; and Enrique thought that that necklace, made to encircle throats, could be the symbol of a yoke of love that was just beginning. Later, he discovered something intimate and sweet in the confidence with which Alicia dressed a few feet away from him, and in the pleasure the chambermaid displayed upon learning that “Master Enrique” was dining there. These were trivial details that cheered his flagging spirits and made him realize that all this, if his clumsiness were not too great, could be transformed for him into something more modest and exquisite than a chaste and cordial friendship. Lost in these pleasant thoughts, Enrique Darlés remembered that most of the splendid and eloquent protagonists of the novels he had read had experienced situations similar to the one he, a wretched provincial, faced at such moments. The beveled glass window of a wardrobe brought back the image of her body, tall and slender, dressed in black, and her face with a romantic profile, pale and hairless. What surprises would Fate have in store for his great youth?… To distract himself, he began to examine the little porcelain or bronze figurines the toy vendors were stocking: hooded gnomes, dogs, cats, all gazing at themselves with a grimace of astonishment in a tiny mirror; and then he inspected the marble clock and the vases decorating the mantelpiece, and the portraits and small, cheap paintings, of little merit but in showy frames, that covered the light green wallpaper almost to the ceiling. And Enrique wisely thought that those portraits, those oil paintings , those pretty and frivolous pieces of furniture, were the trail of all the mercenary loves that had passed that way. His attention was also caught by a rich collection of postcards pinned to a Japanese screen: they depicted dancers, landscapes, and romantic scenes; almost all of them bore a man’s signature and a meaningful dedication. Many were dated in Paris, the City of the Sun, beloved of adventurers; others in America, or in Cairo. Those cards were like incense offered to the beauty of the woman herself; amidst the longings of exile and under all climates, there was a memory for her; one could say that the warmth of her flesh had left an immortal mark on those vagrant men. Alicia Pardo reappeared enveloped in a puff of violet essence. “Have I kept you waiting long? I don’t think so. Come on then; let’s go to the dining room!” If we want to get to the theater on time, let’s not lose minute. Dinner was pleasant and light: a herb soup, two English-style partridges, some prawns; and for dessert, tocino de cielo, orange marmalade, and golden bananas. At the theater, Alicia and her companion occupied two seats in the second row. When they arrived, the performance had already begun. However, the presence of “Tacita de Oro” aroused curiosity among the male audience in the boxes. Several pairs of twins converged on her; from the stage, an actor took advantage of an absence to give her an almost imperceptible smile, to which she responded with a nod . These displays of sympathy, which are usually a source of satisfaction and vanity for worldly men , unsettle young gentlemen, producing, depending on their temperament, emotions of shame or jealousy. For his part, Enrique Darlés felt inhibited and unbalanced, and a great wave of hot blood invaded his cheeks. Not for a moment did he consider that those grave, rich, and old gentlemen, who never reach the intimacy of courtesans by the flowery path of sympathy, might envy him, seeing him handsome and young. In the student’s silence, Alicia guessed the embarrassment that dominated him. “What’s the matter? Are you ashamed of being seen with me?” Enrique feigned surprise. “Ashamed?” he repeated; “and of what? On the contrary…” And his fingers pressed hers with ineffable ardor. At the end of the act, the audience began to applaud; many enthusiastic voices called for the author. Alicia Pardo also clapped her hands. “I want to meet him,” she said. Enrique, to please her, applauded loudly. In the midst of that crackling storm of apotheosis, the curtain rose again and the author appeared. He was a man with an aquiline profile, to whom his theatrical successes and loose habits gave a prestigious halo of talent and scandal. He looked a little over forty, but his supple body retained all the mischievous mobility of youth. The lights of the drums illuminated him very well; he smiled; he had the smug expression of a victor. Without ceasing to applaud, Alicia Pardo exclaimed to Enrique: “He’s very nice, isn’t he?… I must have someone introduce me to him. My friend Candelas knows him very well…” And her long green eyes dilated with emotion, and on her capricious forehead her curly red hair trembled like a leonine mane. At that moment, Enrique Darlés felt small and obscure again. His love meant nothing in Alicia’s fickle life. Minutes before, while caressing her tender fingers, he had thought she was smitten, in love with him; And suddenly he saw her transfigured, beside herself, her mad head thrown back in a gesture of devotion, offering her snowy throat to the triumphant playwright. For ethnic reasons, women adore everything strong, everything that shines, everything that drags… “If I weren’t here,” Darlés thought melancholically, “she would surely go looking for him…” During the second act, the student recovered his cheerfulness. Alice pressed against him, sleepy and nervous, and her tousled curls sent electric tingles across his temples. At the end of the play, the ovation was repeated, and the playwright reappeared. Henry applauded lukewarmly; there was a moment when he thought the playwright’s gaze was fixed on Alice avidly. Under this painful impression, the student went out into the street. The young woman was holding his arm and shivering with cold inside her elegant gray cloak. The night was unpleasant; It had rained. Alice asked, “Where are we going?” Surprised, he replied, “To your house; we’ll take a carriage… ” “No, not to my house. ” “What? ” “Let’s go this way. I’ll give you tonight.” She smiled at him, a promising, fascinating smile that was worth a fortune. He remembered with anguish that he barely had ten pesetas left. To avoid the stumbling blocks and stares of passersby, Alice took refuge in a doorway; her feet were stiff; the damp The thin sole of her shoes pierced the floor. “Make up your mind quickly,” she stammered; “I’m freezing to death. ” Enrique, with a resolve that he believed very much like that of a man of the world, suddenly exclaimed : “If you want to have dinner, let’s go to Fornos. ” She made a grimace of horror. “How awful! Everyone in Fornos knows me. ” “Then let’s go to Morán’s house. ” “Except; there might be a friend of mine there, too. ” “To Viña P. ” “Nor; I don’t dare… ” And she added, with cruel innocence: “I don’t dare because… you know… we women lose face. If my friends, who are serious men, saw me with you around, they would say I have whims, they would call me crazy…” Enrique Darlés barely understood, but he vaguely suspected that all this involved a humiliation for him. Suddenly, like someone grasping at a saving idea, Alice exclaimed: “What time is it? ” “A quarter past one. ” “Well, look: let’s go to Las Ventas or La Bombilla. The same carriage that takes us can bring us back. ” “It’s… it’s just…” He hesitated; he didn’t know how to express his ridiculousness, the enormous, unforgivable ridiculousness of being poor. Finally, he decided to speak, harassed by Alice’s questions, who didn’t understand his uncertainties. “It’s just… forgive me… I don’t have enough money.” She replied: “You child!… But you hardly need anything… Don’t you even have… two hundred pesetas? ” “Two hundred pesetas!” Enrique Darlés stammered, terrified; “no… no…” “And a hundred? ” “Nor. ” “Well, let’s finish: how much do you have?” Enrique would have liked to die. Desperate, biting his lip, he replied: “I barely have two duros left…” She burst out laughing; one of those great laughs, loyal and rude, that she had perhaps not had since a rich man, having elevated her to the path of sin, had taken away the sweet joy of being poor. “And with ten pesetas,” she said, “you proposed that I go to Fornos?” Embarrassed, Enrique replied: “I don’t deserve you, I’m not worthy of you. I’ll take you home. ” Alicia replied, seduced by the bohemian novelty of the adventure: “It doesn’t matter; I want us to have dinner together; take me to a tavern, to a cheap little cafe. It’s all the same to me… ” He hesitated; she insisted. Enrique was restrained by the fear of embarrassing himself. “And if you don’t like dinner? ” “Fool! Now I don’t try to ‘know’; I try to ‘remember’. Do you think I’ve always been rich?” –In that case… –Yes, take me… bring me into your life… Arm in arm, they continued down the street; their feet walked in time. He repeated feverishly: –Alicia, my Alicia… And as he buried his white, trembling lips in the hair of the much- desired one, it seemed to him that all of Madrid smelled of violets. Chapter 14. After that memorable night, several days passed without Enrique Darlés finding an opportunity to see Alicia. He went to her house many afternoons, from two-thirty to three, a time when Don Manuel was never there. But Teodora wouldn’t allow him to miss the reception. Sometimes “the young lady” had gone out, other times she was sleeping or sick with a migraine and couldn’t receive him. The chambermaid’s accent was dry, disconcerting; because if there’s one way we know the good or bad opinion a person has of us, it’s by the way their servants receive us. The student stammered: “Has she left you no errand for me?” “No, sir; none.” And before the young woman’s mischievous and laughing countenance, Enrique felt his face lengthen with melancholy and his eyes fill with pain and humility, like those of a dismissed servant. Then, as if he did not want to completely renounce the illusion that had brought him there, he murmured: “Well; how can it be! Tell her I’ve been here and that I’ll come back tomorrow. ” When he went down the stairs he was very sad; that notion of his inferiority that wounded him the night he was introduced to Alicia Pardo, He attacked her again. Yes, he was a loser, an inept man, who contributed nothing positive there : no money, since he wasn’t rich; no fame, since he wasn’t an acclaimed artist; and no joy either, since the little joy there was in his reflective and sentimental heart was stolen by Alice’s wanderings. Many days, at dusk, he would park on Main Street in front of the window where that superb emerald necklace Alice had told him about sparkled; and sometimes he would walk back and forth along the sidewalk, wrapped in his cloak with a certain worldly aplomb, and other times he would stop to contemplate the jewelry store, whose electric bulbs enveloped passersby in a gigantic flood of light. There he would remain for a long time, caught in the spell of the bloodthirsty rubies, the burning topazes like wounds, the sky-colored turquoises, the chains and rings, which traced golden vibrations on the artfully wrinkled black velvet that, like a gauze, covered the wide perimeter of the window; and in this vague attraction the jewels caused him, there was something of a presentiment. Meanwhile, his childish soul thought: “If Alice were to pass by, she would be delighted to see me here.” During those first days, the memory of his beloved lingered in the student’s mind under the strange sensation of a violet perfume. He either didn’t remember Alice’s wide green eyes, her cruel, epigrammatic little mouth, her white, fleshy body, or thought he didn’t remember well. Instead, that scent of violets invaded his spirit, and it seemed to permeate his clothes, his hands, his textbooks, his shabby bed. This sweet illusion, however, faded; time carried it away, erasing it, just as it had erased the memory of it in Alice. Darlés wept a great deal. That night, he wrote the young woman a desperate, somewhat enigmatic postcard. “I’ll come see you tomorrow,” he said; “if you don’t see me, I’ll die. Be compassionate. My little room no longer smells of you.” The student’s letter angered Alice. Why these hyperbolic displays of passion? Wasn’t what had happened between them something trivial and perfectly ordinary? And she was so sure of it that her emotion, rather than disgust, was astonishment. At first, her surprise inspired a certain joy. “It would be interesting,” she thought, “if that boy were to fall in love with me like a hero in a drama.” But the joy of such curiosity lasted only a moment. Immediately , her cold will, her straightforward and egotistical spirit, which brooked no disturbance, reacted against that novelistic possibility. She neither wanted to love nor be loved; she knew from the testimony of close friends that love, with its anxieties and jealousy, is as fatal and bitter for the one who feels it as for the one who inspires it. The whim that brought her into Enrique’s arms was of no importance in her eyes. The afternoon preceding their first and only night of intimacy, Darlés happened to surprise her in one of those hours of annoyance, laxity, and eclecticism that, in the fickle feminine morality, wander equidistant from good and evil. She was as frivolous as she could be , chastely, arbitrarily, without precise reason or motive. Perhaps, had the student had more beautiful eyes, she would have said “yes”; Perhaps also, if she had liked that emerald necklace, over which she and Manolo had argued moments before , a little less, she would have said “no”… The only thing that is certain is that she accepted Darlés’s company because she kindly assumed that a man’s conversation, even a very poor one, is worth and entertains more than the memory of a necklace. And
when she returned home the next morning, she found herself a little surprised by his behavior. It was a stroke of genius, a joke similar to that which could have landed a critic like Sarcey, after forty years of serious theater, in a puppet show. The incident, therefore, would not be repeated; it was absurd. The next day, Alicia learned from Teodora that Darlés had come to visit her while she was away. On subsequent afternoons, the same thing happened. The young woman She finally felt annoyed by the deplorable and stubborn image of that young man, a beggar for love, who had unexpectedly come to disturb the easy course of her carefree life. Every time Teodora informed her that the student had returned, Alicia Pardo would become furious. “But what does he want?” she exclaimed, “because I don’t know…” And she was sincere; she didn’t know; in the selfish frivolity of her character, she couldn’t understand how a man who had obtained everything from a woman couldn’t grow tired of her. Her displeasure intensified with the postcard, in which the student grieved at her abandonment. It was essential to unravel this entanglement once and for all, and to achieve this, there was nothing better than to receive the importunate man and speak to him impassively, as if nothing secret existed between them. The next day, at the usual hour, Enrique Darlés arrived at Alicia’s house. Teodora let him into the dining room. “I’m going to inform the young lady that you’re here.” The student stood thoughtfully, one elbow resting on the windowsill. Before, when he was merely ” Don Manuel’s friend,” he was received without formality; no one announced him. Now he found himself isolated, oppressed by that hostile friendliness with which we greet visitors who are bothersome to us. Teodora reappeared. “The young lady says you may come in.” Alicia Pardo was in her study accompanied by a tall, dark-haired young woman dressed in gray. The elegant masculine expression of his English suit was completed by the ribbon of a red tie and the whiteness of his collar and starched cuffs. Upon seeing Enrique, Alicia, without moving from her seat or extending her hand, exclaimed: “Hello! Is it you?” And there was something infinitely humiliating in the cordiality, a touch of disdain, of her greeting . The student paled. All her blood had flowed back to her heart, turned to ice. Always nonchalant, Alicia introduced him: “Mr. Darlés; my friend Candelas…” She fixed her flashing, astute eyes on the newcomer, then looked at Alicia, as if asking if this visit didn’t conceal a secret of love. The young woman understood, and to her friend’s sly question, she had a straightforward response: “No,” she said, “you’re mistaken. Enrique comes here because he’s a friend of Manolo’s. ” The student nodded, and a cold smile spread across Candelas’s lips. Then the two young women resumed the conversation that had been interrupted by the student’s arrival, so that Darlés felt suddenly isolated and dismissed. Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed… without the lively chatter subsiding; the names of friends were mentioned in the conversation, and Candelas laughed a lot as he described the details of a dinner party she and Alicia Pardo had attended. Perhaps she did it with a malicious intent, to convince herself that Enrique was, in fact, nothing more than “a friend of Don Manuel.” Then a visitor arrived. It was a young woman who dealt in clothes and jewelry. She carried a heavy bundle, which she placed on the floor. Alicia asked: “What’s new, Clotilde?” The woman addressed seemed to swell with joy inside her carpeted shawl. “I’m wearing,” she said, “the best clay skirts and the best stockings in the world. ” “Very expensive? ” “And very cheap. I don’t know why I imagine you feel like spending money today. ” In a moment, the furniture in the study disappeared under a multicolored wave of jeweled silks, green, purple, and blue, which, when spread out, spread a pleasant, clean smell. As if by magic, Alicia and Candelas appeared devoured by that acquisitive urge that torments women at the counters of fashion stores. The two of them argued over the value of each item. “How much is this skirt? ” “As long as it’s for you, one hundred pesetas. ” “And that one, the heliotrope? ” “Seventy-five. Look closely. It’s magnificent!” Enrique watched with amazement this evaporation of elegance and luxury. He had never dreamed that civilization would surround the love of so many. refinements, and as she sank her candid gaze into the skirts, full of soft murmurs, and into the bows and opulent lace of those nightgowns, as full and majestic as senatorial togas, she sadly recalled the poor little white shifts and the coarse, unvoluptuous petticoats that the women of her town used to hang out to dry on the windowsills of their rooftops. A new detail increased her anguish. The saleswoman and Alicia were bitterly arguing over the price of the heliotrope skirt. Clotilde was asking seventy- five pesetas, and the young woman asserted that she couldn’t give more than ten duros. The saleswoman insisted: “Cheer up, because you won’t find a cheaper one anywhere. I’m selling it at that price to please you; but I don’t earn half a maravedi in the bargain .” And she added, turning to Enrique: “Come on, this gentleman will give it to you.” Darlés blushed and couldn’t answer. Men without money are despicable, and when Alicia didn’t even raise her head to look at him, the student realized he had lost her. Oh! If there were a devilish bank where lovers could exchange the years they had to live for money, their existence, their entire existence, would have been given in exchange for those fifteen cursed duros… Tired of arguing, the saleswoman repacked her package; the conversation changed course; they talked about jewelry. Candelas showed a shuttle that had been given to her. Clotilde offered the young women a necklace. “If you want to see it, I’ll bring it; I have it at home.” Alicia sighed, and that long, broken sigh, like a child’s, was one of immense sorrow. “I’m in love with a necklace they sell on Calle Mayor, and I don’t want any other. I dream about it. I’ve never seen anything like it. I assure you, the man who gives it to me will win me over. ” “How much is it? ” “Fifteen thousand pesetas.” And he added, fixing Darlés with an indefinable look: “I believe this gentleman here intends to buy it from me… Isn’t that right, Enrique?” Candelas was about to laugh, but stopped; his divining eyes had just caught a glimpse of a terrifying tragedy in the student’s flushed face. Unable to contain himself, Darlés had risen to leave, and his eyes revealed such shame and despair that Alicia took pity on him. “I’ll see you off,” he said. They left the study. When they reached the reception room, the student, beside himself, began to cover the young woman’s hands with kisses; his tears burst into tears. “Alice, Alice!” he stammered, “why are you so cruel? I’m dying for you… Alice… oh!… why don’t you love me?” She, now recovered from her fleeting emotion, tried to free herself. “Well, well… how silly you are!” ” I adore you… Alicia… soul of my soul!” “Well, be sensible… goodbye. This compromises me. ” “I need to see you… see you… see you!” ” Well… be quiet, and goodbye… be quiet…” Candela might get suspicious, and I don’t want her to laugh at us. She spoke in a low voice, while gently pushing Darlés towards the door. He murmured: “Are you firing me? ” “No. ” “Yes; you’re firing me! ” “No, no… come on…” ” Yes; you’re throwing me out… you’re throwing me out because I’m poor, because I haven’t known how to win you over… but how can I win you over if I haven’t had time?” She was growing impatient; her brow was hardening. He continued, clasping his hands: “And you’re wrong to fire me… ” “Well.” “You’re wrong, because a man who loves a lot can do a lot, and I, who am poor, would be rich; And I, who am obscure, would be a famous artist if you wished. For you I would kill, I would steal… —Hush, hush… and go… —Yes, whatever you command me; that… hero or thief… everything; but at your side, with you, for you… Alice, my Alice… whatever you want… I am twenty years old!… Without suspecting it, the innocent man had said a phrase, a great phrase, when he placed at the feet of the ungrateful woman the treasure of that age, for which Faust was damned. Alicia had opened the door. “Goodbye,” she whispered, “go away; Manolo can come… ” “When will we see each other? ” “Another day. ” “When ? ” “I don’t know… let me…” “Tomorrow? ” “No.” “Tell me, name a date… I’ll be patient… I’ll wait… When? ” She hesitated. He insisted, feverish. ” When? ” “You’re making me dizzy. ” “Oh! Just get it over with!… When?” A look of perdition, of madness, passed through the sinner’s green eyes, green as emeralds, and then seemed to slide down her cheeks until it turned into a smile on the tyrannical line of her lips. “When?” she repeated. Unconsciously, the student was afraid, but he soon recovered. “Yes, talk; when? ” “I don’t know. ” “Say it, say it.” “It’s nonsense.” “It doesn’t matter; say it, when?” Gently, she replied, “Never. When you bring me the necklace I asked for.” He looked at her, terrified, thinking that Alice was serious. She repeated, “Then…” And she closed the door. Enrique Darles went downstairs, weeping. Chapter 15. The next morning, Darles went out very early; he was exhausted; he had spent a sleepless and frightened night, and when day broke and he found himself in his very poor room, with no other furniture than a chest of drawers loaded with newspapers and books, a shabby little pine table, and some cane chairs, everything shabby and old, he was struck with the violence of a blow by the emotion of his solitude and experienced that restlessness that psychologists call claustrophobia or “terror of closed spaces.” He walked for a long time, absorbed in nameless and uncharacteristic hesitations. He did not recognize himself. In a few hours of pain, his conscience had been cruelly twisted, and from this fierce convulsion now emerged unusual unfoldings, enormous moral panoramas studded with terrifying perplexities. Against the bulwark of the ethical principles instilled in him as a child, his despair unleashed a resounding avalanche of questions. And each question constituted a terrible enigma. Where does good end? Where does evil begin? Why, if all our efforts should be directed toward seeking our own happiness, are there desires that established morality deems depraved and dishonest? Why isn’t everything pleasing permissible? Upon reaching Atocha Street, Darlés bumped into a friend of his, also a medical student, named Pascual Cañamares. The two young men greeted each other. Cañamares was going to San Carlos. “Do you want to come?” he said. “I’ll show you the dissection room.” Darlés followed his classmate. The latter was struck by Enrique ‘s pallor . “You look very bad. ” “It’s because I haven’t slept. ” “Did you spend the night partying? ” “On the contrary. I spent it crying.” And there was such manly pain in his reply that his interlocutor didn’t dare inquire. The dissection room, cold and white, moved Darlés deeply. Through the high windows, the sun fell in torrents, painting a wide band of gold on the tiled baseboards. On the marble tables, covered by blood-stained sheets, were several corpses, their heads shaved and their lips open. Their bare feet, close together, gave a macabre sensation of stillness. An indefinable, nauseating smell of dead flesh floated in the air . Darlés experienced a slight faintness that forced him to close his eyes, and he fled the room. For more than an hour he wandered through the spacious, sinisterly resounding cloisters of San Carlos. A strange sadness hung over the building, an old, damp mansion that was once a convent before becoming a school, and where, to the deep melancholy of a religion that thinks only of death, seems to be added the great disillusionment of a science that cannot free life from pain. When Pascual Cañamares left class, he wanted Darlés to accompany him to lunch. Enrique agreed. It was twelve o’clock. Cañamares was having lunch in a The tavern in the Plaza de Antón Martín was a cheerful establishment, with high, red-painted wooden baseboards. The two students sat down at a table, over which the innkeeper had spread a small tablecloth. Cañamares exclaimed, “What do you want to eat? ” “I don’t care. Whatever you eat. ” “Soup and stew? ” “Okay…” Cañamares ordered, affably, “Madam! A stew!” He was a young man of twenty, sanguine and plump, full of that healthy, turbulent joviality that emanates, like perfume, from great vital energies. He talked a lot, and his picturesque and frivolous conversation was filled with an infectious good humor. Enrique Darlés responded distractedly and in monosyllables, paying attention only to what several coachmen, seated at a nearby table, were saying about a certain crime committed that morning. Two men, both in love with the same woman, had fought with knives, and one of them killed the other. The victor was imprisoned. It was a vulgar but intense affair, barbaric in its beauty and, in its way, chivalrous, since there was no betrayal in the fight. And the student admired and even envied those two brave men who, out of love, faced the solemnity of that moment where the wound that causes death and the stab that leads to imprisonment coincide. As they left the tavern, Pascual said goodbye abruptly. “I’m leaving because I’m not having fun with you. I don’t know what’s wrong with you. You don’t even listen!” And he left. Enrique Darlés watched him walk away impassively, and then experienced a painful feeling of emptiness. He was alone because he had had the frankness not to hide his dark mood, because he had allowed all the melancholy of his soul to freely appear in his eyes; And then he understood that being very sincere is equivalent to being very generous, since any sincerity, even the most innocent, always costs a lot. That night he ate a frugal dinner and went to bed early. He lay awake for a long time, tormented by a flood of disjointed memories. His father, who was his past, and Alicia Pardo, who symbolized his present, were both pleading with him. In the end, the image of the young woman prevailed. Little by little, he began to examine the fickle, mocking soul of that woman who, upon awakening from a night of love, had looked at him with a shrug. What had happened? Which of them was at fault? Was she perhaps an ingrate incapable of lofty and lasting feelings, or was it that he, withdrawn and prudish, had failed to reciprocate Alicia’s hopes?… Under the torturing tyranny of his will, his memory evoked moments, reconstructed sentences, and brought new relevance to the details of that fateful night when he believed all of Madrid smelled of violets… And as we always tend to forgive those we love, after much deliberation, Enrique Darlés came to believe that Alicia Pardo was innocent. From the first moment, she had been good; she had encouraged him to undertake her conquest, and then, quite simply, with no other purpose than to see him happy, she opened her arms to him; Venusian arms that placed a bond of sweetness and mercy around his neck. And he, in exchange for such a lofty fortune, what had he given?… In the student’s conscience, an implacable accusing voice rose. Alicia, accustomed to the world, was a woman of demanding and refined tastes, who adored luxury and understood Beethoven. Several aristocrats loved her, making her beauty a fashion statement, and more than one operatic tenor sang her favorite racconto just for her, in the privacy of her bedroom. And the inexorable voice continued: “What did you do, poor Darlés, to deserve that treasure? What merits are yours? Women who are all beauty want what shines, strength, the supreme beauty of man: strength, which is glory in the artist, money in the millionaire, elegance and poise in the man of the world, despair in the suicide, courage and rebellion in the thief who boldly stands up to the law. But you, who are nothing, what do you grieve for or what do you aspire to?” The student heaved a deep sigh, and his eyelids filled with tears. He was a fool, a weak, cowardly lad. A man who ruined himself for her, or who, to keep her, killed and went to prison, can complain about a woman. He, on the other hand… Suddenly, Darles shuddered so violently that the electric shock in his nerves wrung a scream from him. He sat up in bed; he was livid. If he could offer Alice neither the glory of an artist nor a fortune, he must offer her his honor: he must steal… It was a terrible revelation that sounded like hell. Then he understood that enigmatic expression that had inflamed his eyes and then trickled down Alice’s lips the last time they spoke. He had said to her: “When will I see you?” And she had answered: “Never. When you bring me the necklace I asked for.” Now these cabalistic words resonated clearly in his mind: now he understood them. Alicia was in love with a jewel she couldn’t buy, and more than once, thinking about her, he felt sad; her grief was genuine; he had seen it. Perhaps the young woman, in saying goodbye to him and reminding him of that necklace, had been joking; perhaps she had been serious. Who knows! In any case, by affirming that they would “never” see each other, she had secretly expressed her conviction that he was a coward who would never lose himself to her. Enrique Darlés’s feverish eyes shone like carbuncles. And why not steal? Why not show himself brave and capable of anything? There is something superhuman at the bottom of great sacrifices that bewilders and drags. If he were a thief; if he paid with his audacity for what money could not acquire— If, in order to please her, he were to lose his career, face his father’s curse and the rigor of the law, Alice would love him blindly, with that frenzy that Vautrin, the Balzacian hero, inspired in women. The voice that had once thundered accusingly in the student’s stormy conscience now murmured sullenly and softly: “Alice, your Alice, would be happy with the emeralds in that necklace. If you have no means of buying it, steal it. You are a wretch if you do not steal for her. What do you care for the opinion of the masses? Selfish! A man who is not capable of being a thief for a woman may love her very much, but he does not love her blindly. Whatever your Alice desires, you must give her. Do not hesitate, and steal; Steal that necklace for her and then fasten it around her neck, whose snow so many times, in the space of a single night, has refreshed your lips…
These thoughts came to corroborate his most recent impressions: that of his visit to the dissection room, where he saw once again that everything is nothing, and that of that crime out of jealousy he heard told about in the tavern. And suddenly, Enrique Darlés felt calm. His future had just been decided: he would steal. Fate, made flesh in the body of Alicia Pardo, had just decreed a path for him. Every evening, at sunset, at that mysterious hour when the street lamps begin to light and the women look more beautiful, the student would leave his house and, along the streets of Mesonero Romanos and Carmen, head toward the Puerta del Sol, always filled with an idle, apathetic crowd that doesn’t know how to walk. On Main Street, he would pause, sinking an avid and fearful gaze into the jewelry store, whose glittering window resembled a glowing ember. The daily, calm contemplation of those treasures produced in Enrique Darlés a moral disturbance, the seriousness of which he had no idea. The idea of stealing was incubating in his mind, obsessing him, turning into an irreducible and uncontrolled resolve. To his torment, that emerald necklace that served as a lure for the store had no buyer. It was too expensive. With his nose pressed against the window, Enrique suffered long minutes of anguish, unable to dissuade his eyes from that abyss, a precipice of gold and velvet at the bottom of which the diamonds, the topazes, the emeralds, the pearls, the rubies, the amethysts, seemed like the pupils of a strange multitude. His imagination, meanwhile, spun a story of madness. He, with his prey hidden in In his most secret pocket, he would go to see Alicia and say: “Here, here is your necklace; the necklace that neither Don Manuel nor those millionaire aristocrats you know wanted to buy for you, I won for you at the risk of my life. What do you say now?” And while thinking this, he would close his eyes, believing that the air around him smelled of violets. Then, when he opened his eyelids, the emeralds of the necklace, green and hard like Alicia’s pupils, seemed to say to him: “All this, so beautiful, will happen when you want it.” It was the secretive voice of temptation: a voice made of light… One afternoon, as he recovered from one of these long and profound reverie, he saw Alicia Pardo and her friend Candelas approaching. They had seen him too. Troubled, almost without a voice, the student greeted them. Alicia shook his hand affectionately, and this time he inhaled more deeply the violet perfume that had flavored his thief’s dreams. The young woman asked: “What are you doing here? ” “Nothing… just hanging around…” Alicia inspected the window. “Oh, yes! Were you looking at my necklace? ” “Yes, exactly…” And as she said this, she blushed, because it was tantamount to confessing that he was thinking of her. Candelas examined the smiling student. Alicia Pardo added cruelly: “You know I asked for it. ” “I know, I remember.” He spoke sadly, and she began to laugh. “So, what? Are you thinking of giving it to me? ” “Who knows!” A sudden anger had given his features a virile and aggressive tension. His forehead and lips paled. Candelas, who was kind-hearted, tried to alleviate his torment. “Leave it alone with women,” he exclaimed. We are very wicked. Believe me : the best, the most saintly of us, is not worth a sacrifice. Alice interrupted her friend. “You silly girl! We are only joking. Do you think Henry could do something crazy for me? What nonsense!” The student repeated fiercely: “Who knows!” And then, after a pause: “I don’t know why you speak like that. You haven’t treated me. You don’t know who I am. ” Two months before, the slightly mocking remarks and the smiles of the two young women would have disconcerted him. But now he found himself transfigured and possessed of a new and vigorous ardor. He no longer doubted; an extraordinary and overwhelming concept of himself invaded him, and this conviction of his youth, his audacity, his strength, finally alienated him like a wave of alcohol. A moment had been enough for the child to grow up and become a man. Alice stared at him; her lips became grave; Beneath the double fringe of her red hair, parted symmetrically across her forehead, her eyes took on a thoughtful expression. She didn’t know how primitive men hunted reindeer, but she knew how to discern characters and stir passions, and if she glanced at few books, she read fluently from many consciences, which is even better. Her sharp instinct, which was rarely mistaken, divined something domineering and desperate in the student’s gesture and voice . She preferred to cut the conversation short. “Goodbye, Enrique. Ah! Manolo has asked for you several times. ” “Thank you very much. Give him my regards. ” “When will you be home?” Always somber, Darlés replied: “I don’t know, Alicia; but rest assured that I will go as soon as I must.” And in this allusion to what he called “his duty” there was an indefinable tremolo of pride and bitterness. Left alone, the student had an explosion of anger that, lacking words, dissolved into tears. He was convinced that his somewhat mysterious answers had impressed Alice; they had been beautiful. Now, in order not to lose what he had gained, he needed his conduct to corroborate what he had said. He had secretly committed himself to something very serious. If he didn’t keep his promise, he would be made a fool of. It was, therefore, essential to see it through. “I’ll be a thief,” he thought. Then he went to his tavern, where he dined quietly and went to bed. Early. He slept well, with that profound peace that irrevocable resolutions leave in long-troubled spirits . It was noon when he awoke. He immediately got up, dressed in clean clothes, and wrote his father a calm letter, in which he spoke only of his studies. Then he stuffed all his textbooks into a handkerchief and went out into the street. He was going to sell them. “If they catch me,” he reflected, “I might need that money; and if I manage to escape and everything remains a mystery, I’ll have time to recover them.” After the sale, he went to a luxurious restaurant, where he had a rather refined lunch. In all these minor details, so contrary to the order and simplicity of his usual life, an observer would have detected a certain melancholy of farewell. Afterwards, he drank coffee on the terrace of the Lyon d’Or, and acknowledged that many of the women who passed by were pretty. He had no concrete thoughts about what he was going to do . He preferred to abandon himself to the unexpected. Major conflicts are best resolved on the fly, suddenly, in the face of imminent danger. At six o’clock sharp, he got up and, crossing Sevilla Street, headed down San Jerónimo Street toward Puerta del Sol. The streetlights and the shops were still off. It was an April afternoon; a cool, damp mist swept the streets; into the clear, rose-tinged space, Venus poured the serenity of her ancient light. Darlés moved forward calmly, with a tranquility of movement that seemed to reflect perfect equanimity. When he reached the sidewalk in front of the Ministry of the Interior, he paused to observe the streetcars, the cars, the crowd milling around him. The thought that they would soon arrest him reappeared in his mind. “Tomorrow,” he thought, “I won’t see any of this.” And his eyes held a melancholy of “goodbye.” However, he could no longer bend his resolve to steal. The root of this madness was, more than a carnal longing, a romantic, almost flirtatious urge to “look good.” The lust of the first moments had evolved into the elegant, purely artistic sentiment of a “beautiful gesture.” Ultimately , seizing Alicia was the least of it: the important thing, if not the only thing, was to have before her the beauty of heroism; for great criminals, as for illustrious artists, as for multimillionaires who ruin themselves overnight, as for all those who break the vulgar mold, the adventurous soul of a woman holds admiration. And the student, considering that Alicia Pardo would always remember that there was an honorable man who went to prison for her, considered himself satisfied and happy. Absorbed in these fantasies, Enrique Darlés arrived at the jewelry store on Calle Mayor, whose newly lit lights cast a generous glow onto the sidewalk. The waiter stopped in front of the window, full of blinding brilliance. In the center of the window, around the neck of a white velvet half-bust, was the necklace, the terrible emerald necklace. Darlés gazed at it for a long time, and at first he experienced that sensation of fear and cold that firearms inspire . Then this emotion disappeared; the green light of the emeralds alienated him; it was a kind of telluric attraction, as invincible as the force of gravity. Nevertheless, he still hesitated, still understood that in the half meter that separated him from the window, an abyss floated. Suddenly, he thought: “What if Alicia saw me here now?” This thought defeated his last fears, and he opened the door of the establishment with a sure hand. He then advanced toward the counter; His step was firm and easy. A tall, elegant shop assistant with a long blond mustache came out to greet him. “What did you want?” With a poise he wouldn’t have thought himself capable of seconds before, Enrique answered, “I’d like to see that emerald necklace in the window. ” “Yes, sir.” Darlés looked around and noticed that, at the back of the store, a The white-bearded gentleman, the owner, was undoubtedly watching him closely. He already had a plan: he would seize the jewel and flee toward the door, which he had left ajar for that purpose. The clerk returned with the necklace, which he placed on the moss-green drapery on the counter. Enrique Darlés barely dared to touch it. “How much is it?” “Fifteen thousand pesetas.” The student clicked his tongue, as drinkers do to celebrate the good taste and quality of a wine. His interlocutor added: “I’m sure you’ve seen few emeralds like these. ” The white-haired gentleman had approached without speaking, his hands in his trouser pockets, and his demeanor was grave and perplexed. It seemed as if his distrustful spirit as a merchant was sensing danger. Darlés looked at him out of the corner of his eye: he was still honorable, he could still change his mind… The clerk had brought several cases, from which he took different necklaces. The man’s affection was infused into the way he held them, caressed them between his manicured fingers, and spread them on the counter cloth . There were diamonds, turquoises, sapphires, topazes… The student hesitated; a dizzying and terrible voluptuousness throbbed in that proximity to crime , both sweet and acrid. He continued asking: “What’s this necklace worth?” “Very little: 2,200 pesetas. ” “And this ruby one?” “4,500.” Darlés picked them up, looked at them carefully, and put them down again. Suddenly, he felt a great pallor spread across his cheeks . To recover, he said: “This one with black pearls is very beautiful. ” “It’s also more expensive: 10,000 pesetas.” Abruptly, the white-bearded gentleman, who until then had not opened his mouth, exclaimed sourly: “Good; I think you’ve talked enough.” And, addressing the clerk, he said, “Put those cases away.” Enrique Darlés raised his head and looked him fiercely in the eye, with the haughtiness of a man who has not yet committed a crime. “What’s the point?” he shouted. “I don’t like wasting time,” replied the jeweler; “you must not have money to spare; I’m not mistaken. ” And turning to his clerk, who was watching the scene in astonishment, he repeated curtly: “I told you to put those cases away.” Perhaps the student was not yet totally determined to steal; perhaps there still remained something good, wholesome in his conscience, which, at the supreme moment, would have overcome the fatal temptation. But the merchant’s harsh words, exasperating him, forced him to commit the crime; he sought revenge and sinned. This case is not new; many, many times, a crime is only the logical retaliation for an injustice. Bewildered, Enrique quickly stretched out an arm toward the place where the emerald necklace lay; his fingers twitched convulsively; he spun around and, with a leap, reached the door. At that moment, two shots rang out one after the other. Darlés began a dizzying, delirious run toward the Viaduct. At first, he heard a voice shouting behind him: “That one, that one! The thief!” A terrible, nightmarish voice, and then he heard the thunderous crash of the people chasing him. The passersby parted in front of him, fear and astonishment on their faces. When he reached Calle de Bordadores, a man brandishing a cane tried to block his way, and then Darlés turned left, conquering the slope of Calle Siete de Julio with the speed of a hare. From a doorway, a chair was thrown at him, barely grazing him, perhaps tripping over those closest to him. As the panting and furious pack of humans passed under the arches of the Plaza Mayor, their threatening cries resounded even louder : “That one!… That one!” The student, madly running straight ahead, reached the railing enclosing the garden and jumped over it. This saved him. The poor light there and the shadows of the trees They blurred his figure. He, however, continued running, and when he hit the railing again, he jumped again. As he fell, his tired knees buckled, and he almost fell face down on the ground. But he got up immediately and kept running. Now the voices of his pursuers echoed far away, beneath the resounding vaults of the square. Darlés continued fleeing down Toledo Street and noticed that many passersby were looking at him anxiously. A woman exclaimed: “He’s wounded!” When he reached Puerta Cerrada, the student approached the famous cross that gives the square its name. He could not go on; his legs were giving way from exhaustion; his heart was bursting; his tongue was lolling out of his mouth. Several women surrounded him in fear. “You’re wounded!” they said. “What is that?… They’ve wounded you!” But their exclamations contained no rancor, only naive pity. The student felt reassured. One of the women was carrying a pitcher. “A mouthful of water!” Enrique stammered. “Water… I’m dying of thirst!” He brought his lips to the mouth of the vessel and drank in long gulps. They kept repeating: “You’re hurt… Poor man! Go to the First Aid Center at once !” So as not to arouse suspicion, Darlés replied: “Yes, I’m going now.” Then he gulped a few more mouthfuls and continued fleeing toward Segovia Street . He ran very fast, very fast, until his strength was completely exhausted. He stopped and examined himself; his wet clothes clung to his flesh, producing an unpleasant sensation of cold; his hands were red: what he thought was sweat was blood. “I’m hurt!” he murmured. And then he understood what the women from Puerta Cerrada had told him. At that moment, a slight dizziness struck him, and he had to lean against the wall. Then he opened his eyes and examined the place where he stood. It was a sloping, lonely alleyway, between modest houses. Very close, against the black immensity of the sky, appeared the imposing mass of the Viaduct, that sinister and magnificent watchtower from which so many sad people had bid farewell to life in a mortal reverence. Enrique Darlés thought again: “I’m hurt… ” His thoughts were coming together: Alicia, her little room on Calle de la Ballesta… He felt his pockets, and his fingers found the necklace, “Her necklace!” The student smiled; an ineffable joy swelled his troubled heart. He sighed; he wiped away two tears. Alicia would be his. The novel of his life had just been written. Chapter 16. Candelas and Alicia Pardo were returning in a landau from the races. The afternoon had been chilly, but the sun never set, and the jockeys fought well. Alicia smiled; she was happy; she had won eight hundred pesetas, and in her eyes still lingered the vision of the riders fleeing with ghostly swiftness against the backdrop of the April landscape. And suddenly, in the second third of the race, from that multicolored group, made up of red, blue, and yellow blouses and white breeches, a horse stood out to take the lead, and she had won… In this victory she found something personal, which pampered her pride. “That jockey your count has now,” she exclaimed, “rides like a centaur. Is he English?” Candelas answered: “No, Belgian.” Alicia, who couldn’t remember exactly which way the Netherlands lay , wasn’t satisfied with the answer. But it didn’t matter; it was enough for her to know that the winning jockey came from one of those northern towns where all the men are proper and blond. Candelas began to explain the blind faith that the count, his friend, had in that extraordinary horseman. In a few words, he outlined a brilliant program of entertainment and travel. At the beginning of May, they would go to London, and in June, to Paris, where the count planned to win the “Grand Prix” at Longchamps. They would spend the autumn in Nice. Alicia Pardo replied: “In September, the Marquis and I are going to Monte Carlo. It is necessary that we meet; with men, right?…, we have little fun. They don’t know how to make us laugh. When the landau arrived at the Plaza de Castelar, Alicia asked her friend: “Do you have anything to do tonight? ” “No. ” “Then come to the Real with me. The evening belongs to Bizet, the divine. They’re performing Carmen, and they’re playing Nasí and Pacteschi. No comment! ” Candelas agreed. “Now,” said Alicia, “I want to go to my house, in case I’ve received any urgent messages. Then I’ll take you to yours, you change your outfit, and we’ll find Manolo so he can invite us to lunch. ” The carriage stopped in front of Alicia’s door, and Teodora, who was on the balcony, came down to the street immediately. She was carrying a letter. “This has come for you. ” “From whom? ” “From Señor Enrique. ” Alicia repeated, surprised: “From Enrique!” She tore the envelope with a feverish gesture and read: “Come to my house, I beg you. I need to see you today.” And it was signed: “E. D..” Alicia seemed to be thinking. Then she looked at her friend. “Do you understand this?… It’s from Enrique Darlés… Do you remember?… A boy, a friend of Manolo’s…” And, turning to Teodora: “Who brought this letter? ” “An old woman. ” “What did she look like?” “I don’t know… like… she looked like a doorkeeper…” Alicia remained undecided; the authoritative conciseness of those lines was impressive. It was a man’s letter; children don’t know how to speak like that. On the envelope, an impatient, perhaps desperate, hand had written, in vigorous letters, the word “urgent.” “What do we do?” she asked. “I think,” replied Candelas, “that we should go see him. ” “Why? ” “When he calls you, something very serious must be happening to him.” “Look…” Alice looked at her watch: it was six o’clock; she could still, without disturbing the evening’s program, allow herself the luxury of a little condescension. And she ordered the coachman: “Crossbow, number…! Hit the ground running!” For a moment the two young women were silent. Candelas suddenly exclaimed: “Have you read what the newspapers say about the robbery that took place last night on Main Street?” “No … What do they say?” “That a jewelry store has been robbed. ” “A jewelry store!” Alice repeated. Her face took on an indescribable expression of anxiety and terror. She remembered that emerald necklace, which she had thought about so often, and the afternoon when she and Candelas had surprised Enrique Darlés motionless before the shop window. Suddenly, the student’s sorrowful figure seemed to rise in her memory. She listened to his last words: “You haven’t treated me well. You don’t know who I am.” And these phrases, which she never valued, now echoed in her ears with a prophetic twang. “What have they stolen?” she asked. “I can’t tell you, because I read the newspaper very lightly. ” “And who is the thief? ” “We don’t know. ” “Didn’t they catch him? ” “No. He was smarter than those who were chasing him… ” “And did he escape? ” “Yes.” The mystery surrounding the criminal increased Alicia’s unease. It was a beautiful, romantic emotion that made her feel a certain conceit. “If only he had stolen it for me!” she thought. A proud and unhealthy emotion, similar to that experienced by a man whose wife has committed suicide before his friends. Candelas, who was following Alicia’s thoughts, exclaimed: “It would be remarkable if the perpetrator of the attack were Enrique Darlés!” “I don’t believe it. ” “Well, look, I doubt it…” “He would have done very wrong. ” “Obviously.” “And if he did, I don’t care. Let him go to hell, for being an idiot. I haven’t asked him for anything; and, after all, what the devil! He who gives is more guilty than he who asks…” The carriage stopped, and Alice and Candles dismounted and entered a shabby-looking doorway. Candles called. “Concierge, concierge!” No one answered them. “Follow me,” said Alice, “I know the way.” She started walking, neatly gathering her pearl-colored skirt and giving the long red cap of her hat a graceful sway. They crossed a sordid, damp courtyard, then another, and began to climb a steep staircase. The silky rustle of her petticoats and the jingle of her bracelets filled the silence. They reached the third floor and stopped before a half-open door. Alicia knocked. No one answered. She knocked again. From inside, a voice, Enrique’s voice, replied weakly: “Come in…” The young woman and Candelas found themselves in a dark room that stank of blood. Alicia Pardo couldn’t suppress a rude exclamation of disgust: “How disgusting! Ugh! What does it smell like in here?” From the back of the room, where the outline of a bed could be seen , Enrique Darlés stammered: “There, on that little table, there are some matches… Light the lamp…” Candelas remained motionless by the door, afraid of tripping. When it became light, the two friends cast a quick glance around . The furniture consisted of a writing table, a chest of drawers with a mirror on it, and against the row of whitewashed walls, half a dozen rush chairs. The student was lying dressed in his bed; on the white pillow, his head, with its curly, jet-black hair, lay inert. He opened his eyes for a moment, and then, slowly, he closed them again. Across his hairless face, saddened by the lividity of his lips, emanated the ethereal and luminous whiteness of final sorrow. The two young women approached the student. Alicia exclaimed: “Enrique!… Enrique!” He half-opened his eyelids, and his turbid pupils fixed a look of gratitude on “Tacita de oro.” She repeated: “Enrique… Do you hear me? ” “Yes. ” “They hurt you, didn’t they? ” “Yes. ” “Were you the one who committed the robbery on Calle Mayor last night? ” “Yes…” Alicia Pardo looked proudly at Candelas, as if inviting her to look closely at her feat, her expression displaying that petulance with which a work of art is exhibited. She had just achieved a great triumph, because only women capable of inspiring mad passions do men dare to do so. Then she leaned her head forward to examine the student’s clothes more closely , and upon finding them stained with blood, she experienced a new fit of disgust. The contrast between the warm, nauseating air of that room, closed for so long, and the healthy atmosphere of the street was too abrupt. “Shall I open the window?” she said. “No… no,” Henry murmured, “I am very weak; the cold would kill me.” Alice, sitting on the bed, that poor bed whose body had one night perfumed violets, watched him in silence. A wide crimson hat, adorned by a magnificent white amazon, covered her pale face, where her green eyes shone lasciviously in the great purple halo of her dark circles; and the libertine grace of her gestures, the childish brevity of her figure, the robust shape of her hips and breasts, and the restlessness with which her impatient, dancing little feet touched the floor as if wishing to escape, contrasted sharply with the ugliness of the unfurnished room, smelling of agony. Candelas seemed moved. But Alice was suffocating; a terrible feeling of disgust was dominating her. Repeatedly, she brought her lace handkerchief to her joyful nose, bathed that afternoon in the loose, oxygenated breeze of the Hippodrome. The invading malaise overcame her affliction. She couldn’t cry. Besides, why? And as long as she could escape quickly, it wouldn’t have mattered to her if Enrique lived a few hours less. In her ingratitude, Alicia Pardo marveled that there were loving women capable of kissing a corpse… Suddenly, eager to conclude, she asked: “But… how were you wounded? ” Enrique opened his eyes again, then his lips. “You’ll find out.” Despite the enormous hemorrhage he had suffered, he still had some strength left, the last of it, and he was able to speak. “I stole for you, because the afternoon you kicked me out of your house you told me: ‘We’ll see each other… when you bring me the necklace I asked for.’ ” Alice exclaimed: “I do n’t remember.” “I do; you told me. I remember everything.” The young woman shrugged her shoulders and her sadistic, wormwood-colored eyes remained dry. Candelas, on the other hand, more human, more womanly than her friend, had tears in her eyes. Enrique continued speaking. His expression was grave. Suddenly, the boy had become a man. “Determined to win you back, I wanted to offer you what you so desired. Last night, when I entered the jewelry store, I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do. However, I approached the counter and said I wished to examine the emerald necklace in the window.” When they brought him to me, along with others, I was seized by a vertigo that cast an immense and terrible darkness over my eyes. I quickly stretched out a hand, grabbed one of the necklaces—I don’t know which one, because they all seemed green to me—and I escaped. But the owner, who had undoubtedly been spying on my every move, pulled out a revolver and fired. His aim was sure. In that tragic moment, I felt nothing and continued running. Behind me, accusing voices repeated: “That one, that one!” And I thought I saw vengeful hands that, eager to seize me, opened and closed like claws behind me. When I returned from my terror, I found myself in a lonely alley; my pursuers had not been able to reach me. Then I noticed that my clothes were soaked in blood and that my legs were giving way. What could I do? Little by little, protected by the shadows of the night, I returned here… and I sent for you… Alice’s curled fingers crossed with a double gesture of interest and horror. “And you haven’t been cured?” she cried. “Didn’t you call a doctor? ” “No; I didn’t want to… because if someone had seen me like this they would have suspected… And I preferred to die than to have the necklace I stole for you taken from me…” And as she felt her energies failing, she added with a gesture: “There it is, on the chest of drawers. Pick up those books.” It was a very sad scene, of a poignant and melodramatic romanticism. Finally, the sinner’s eyelids moistened. “Child, child!” she sobbed, “what have you done? ” Darlés repeated: “Look for it… on the chest of drawers…” She did not want to die without seeing her gift in the hands, mother-of-pearl and snow, of the Desired One. She did as the student ordered, and under some newspapers, her fingers found a necklace of black pearls. “How beautiful!” she exclaimed, absorbed. Without opening her eyes, like someone speaking in a dream, Darlés replied: “It’s not the one you wanted… I know… I saw it later… But at that moment, all the stones seemed green to me…” This was just another episode, just another whim of the bitter and eternal irony of things. To give one’s life for an emerald necklace, and choose the wrong necklace! The student stammered: “Goodbye… ” A long shudder ran through his limbs, and suddenly agony gave his features a manly severity. The line of his lips twisted. Candelas, on her knees, was weeping and praying. Alicia Pardo, more violent, took the student by the shoulders. “Enrique… Enrique!” And she looked at him with one of those tragic expressions, all passion, that explain the sacrifice of a life. The student was still able to murmur: “Remember…” He said no more. He closed his eyelids. He was dying peacefully, without blood. A white shadow slid across his face. Alicia exclaimed: “Enrique… can you hear me?… Enrique!” She felt his forehead and hands. He was cold. “He’s dead,” she said. That, in its way, was beautiful. There was a pause. Candelas had gotten up and the two friends exchanged glances. They had just been struck by the same idea, the same fear. Enrique’s death compromised them; justice would carry out an investigation and it would not be difficult for them to be called to testify. The instinct of self-preservation kept them away from the memory of the dead man. “We’re lost,” said Alicia, “it’s your fault, I didn’t want to come. ” Candelas replied angrily: “It’s your fault. ” “Mine? ” “Of course! Who, if not you, made him steal? ” “Me… me!” “You, yes, stupid…” And in her voice burned that envious resentment that all women feel toward the concubine for whom a man has lost himself. Then, to calm herself, she added: “Fortunately, the concierge didn’t see us come up. ” Alicia Pardo examined the necklace; her egotistical soul, enamored of luxury, her little “prey” soul, forgot about the student again and thought only of the beauty of the jewel. Standing in front of the mirror, she fastened the necklace and began to shake her head from side to side, delighting in the contrast formed by the blackness of the pearls against the ermine of her throat. And for a moment her eyes burned with the insolent vigor of joy. What had happened inspired no remorse in her. Why? Was it her fault that Enrique had taken seriously what she had jokingly requested? And she reflected philosophically that in the history of all great courtesans there is always at least one tragic chapter. Then her spirit experienced a tinge of irony. Poor Enrique! The unfortunate man was one of those unfortunates who, even when they sacrifice themselves, never quite succeed … Finally, obeying more a feeling of tenderness than an artist’s delicacy, she approached the corpse to bid it farewell with a glance. From the doorway, Candelas called to her. “Let’s go…” Alicia Pardo turned around: she had nothing, indeed, to do there. The atmosphere of that room, with its dense air and its brick floor flecked with reddish stains, once again suffocated her. Outside, he would breathe easily, and he remembered that that night, in the stalls at the Real, the pearls in his necklace would attract attention. He wasn’t sad. As he passed in front of the mirror, he glanced at himself out of the corner of his eye. “It’s beautiful,” he thought. And then, with a certain melancholy: “However, I liked the emerald necklace better…” Madrid.–January, 1908. THE SON Chapter 17. At thirty, bored of living alone and without affection, Amadeo Zureda married. He was a man of medium height with a robust shoulder, a sallow complexion, a thoughtful gaze, and a slow and sure demeanor. The whole soul of his face, defined by a rough black mustache, lay more in the taciturn energy of his shaggy brow, somber as a bad memory, than in the strength of his cheekbones and square jaw or the hardness of his nose. One by one, all the features of that countenance faded, and as long as the hairy line of his eyebrows remained intact, Amadeo Zureda’s expression would not have changed; his spirit, reserved and ardent, was still there. Marriage redeemed Rafaela, his wife, from the slavery of the workshop. She had just turned eighteen, and she was a dark-skinned girl with large, mischievous, and mischievous eyes and fragrant, red lips; a supple waist, playful, full, and bouncy hips, a well-plumped breast, and a lively, easy, and adventurous gait. Her wild, somewhat villainous, daughter-of-the-people charm was accompanied by a certain distinction of gestures and inclinations that enhanced and enhanced her beauty; she had small, polished hands and liked to wear finely crafted shoes and clean, crisp petticoats. And as his body was his spirit, agile, restless, incapable of maintaining the same attitude for long ; while he spoke, his mischievous eyes shone with joy, and in his large mouth, with its crystal-white teeth, the light of laughter burned perpetually, like a holy lamp. Amadeo adored her; when in the evenings, upon his return from work, Rafaela came to greet him with jubilant fanfare and then fawningly settled herself on his knees, Zureda, possessed by ineffable joy, would remain open-mouthed and as if in ecstasy, and even that pensive scar between his brows seemed to soften in the grave serenity of his coppery forehead. The couple had settled on the fifth floor of a house near the Estacion del Norte. The building was new, and the Zuredas’ room was very cheerful and sunny, with spacious, bright rooms and two balconies, which Rafaela’s industrious and artistic hands had filled with flowers. Amadeo was a railroad engineer; his employers were delighted with him. He had been working on the Madrid to Bilbao line for two years, and he never committed any offenses worthy of punishment. He was intelligent, active, and hard at work. After a fifteen-hour day, his black eyes, endowed with extraordinary vision, looked tirelessly. Inside his corduroy suit, that muscular, impassive, and sallow man looked like bronze. Zureda loved his trade; he learned it in the United States, the country with the fastest train speeds, and having been orphaned at an early age, he devoted the entire emotional lifespan of his bachelor years to his profession. He knew the road from Madrid to Bilbao down to the smallest detail, inch by inch, and would have been able to walk along it blindly, as safely as in his own house. There were groups of trees, ravines, rivers, hills, and farmsteads that had for him the decisive eloquence of a topographical map or a clock. “When we get to such a place,” he thought, “we have to slow down, because there’s a slope coming down immediately .” Or, “There’s the bridge; it must be such and such time…” And his appreciation of these notions of space and time was always precise, infallible. Zureda knew that those inanimate objects, staggered along the road, were like faithful friends, who would never deceive him. This fetishistic love of the landscape was shared by the one inspired by his machines. He generally worked with the same ones: number 187 and number 1,082. Amadeo called the first one “the Black One”; The second, “La Dulce.” The latter was unruly, violent, and poorly steered. Whenever it climbed a slope, it seemed to tremble with pain, and strange, threatening howls came from its iron belly. On the slopes, it skidded and was difficult to contain; one might say that a wayward spirit was stirring inside it , eternally rebellious to every command. It stood still and refused to move; if it did move, it was difficult to stop it. Whenever it entered the dark arch of the tunnels, its alarm whistle vibrated heartbreakingly, like a human scream. “La Dulce,” on the other hand, was docile, obedient, strong, and willful during the climbs, prudent and reserved on the descents, when it was necessary to restrain the convoy’s reckless descent. Whenever Amadeo went on a trip, which was twice a week, his wife would ask him, “What kind of engine are you driving today?” And if it was “La Dulce,” she remained calm. “With that one,” he would say, “there’s no need to worry. The other one, on the other hand, scares me: she has a bad reputation…” Zureda, however, liked to deal with both of them, and even felt a tendency toward one or the other, depending on the state of his nerves. When he was in a good mood, he preferred “La Dulce,” who gave him no trouble. This happened on peaceful days, under the enormous, burning kiss of the sun. Pedro, the stoker who accompanied Zureda, was Andalusian and knew spicy songs and tasty stories. Amadeo listened to him contentedly, while his watchful eyes gazed into the smiling, blue horizon; the rails that unwound before the engine’s buffers shone in the light and seemed silver; the air was warm and laden with country fragrances; Beneath his feet, the engineer felt the engine tremble, diligent, submissive, without sudden jolts or unusual moans, and he murmured, proud and affectionate, as if encouraging it: “Come on, lamb…” But at other times his sanguine body suffered from hidden anger, capricious irritations, unhealthy imbalances of humor, which took away his desire to speak and deepened the grim scar between his eyebrows. And then he preferred to take “La Negra” with him, always threatening and unsociable, who contradicted all his orders; and this struggle, In a place where danger constantly throbbed, it calmed his nerves and pacified him. Then Pedro, the Andalusian of daring stories and mischievous songs, fell silent, inhibited by the driver’s sour humor. Along the way, as if rhymed by the musical gusts of the wind and the trembling roar of the locomotive, a long dialogue of resentment would begin between man and machine. Gritting his teeth, Zureda would murmur: “Come on, bitch… the slope is hard, but you have to climb it. Go with it!” And he would open the mouth of the furnace, burning red like an infernal pit, and with his own hand, angrily, he would throw eight or ten shovelfuls of coal into the hearth. As if responding to the punishment, the engine would shudder; angry bellows would resound within, and a ripple of hatred seemed to run through its smoking back. From these trips, Amadeo Zureda always returned with a gift for his wife: a corset, a fur collar, a box of stockings… Rafaela, who knew the exact time of the express train’s arrival, would watch for it from a balcony. Zureda, moreover, would warn her from far away with a long whistle. If she was still in bed, she would jump out of bed, dress hastily, and run to the balcony; and on the green windowsill of the flowerpots, her coppery face would smile at the landscape. A moment later, through the leafy groves of Moncloa, the train would appear , crackling and roaring, its black, undulating body unwinding along the polished rails. From the tandem, the driver, overjoyed, would wave to the young woman with a handkerchief; and only then would his frown, to a level where the joy of laughter never rose, unfurrow and he seem happy. Amadeo Zureda desired nothing. His job was thankless, but those two nights he spent in Madrid between trips were enough to bring him happiness. His whole honest and rugged soul was refreshed there, under the roof of the peaceful home, amidst the modest furniture, purchased one by one. That was his reward. Between the loving arms of his companion, the cold that his bones had collected in the open air, on the expanse of the roads, gradually dissipated, and his soul lulled into the warmth of a sweet sensual well-being. Chapter 18. Two years of marriage are enough to age a docile man; or, what is the same, to instill in him those transcendent ideas of foresight, tranquility, and economy, which sow the fear of tomorrow in peaceful minds. One night, while still recovering from a cold that had kept him bedridden for several weeks, Amadeo Zureda spoke seriously to Rafaela about the future. His bronzed head, with its angular cheekbones and energetic profile, rested on the clean pillows , and in the grave serenity of his forehead, the vertical furrow of reflection seemed deeper. His wife, sitting on the edge of the bed, listened attentively, one leg over the other, holding her knee between her crossed hands. The engineer’s speech unfolded slowly: life is worth very little, since misfortune surrounds us and knows how to strike us in infinite ways; today it’s a blast of cold air, tomorrow a congestion, or angina, or cancer, which death uses as vehicles to reach us; the earth where we will all end up, sooner or later, opens around us like an enormous jaw, and in this fierce and rapid universal hecatomb, no one can guarantee that they will be present at the rising and setting of the same day… “I’m not afraid of work, you know that,” Zureda continued. But machines are made of iron and eventually they get used up and tired from walking; so are men… and when that happens to me, which it must, what will become of us?… Rafaela shook her head calmly; she did not share her husband’s fears; Amadeo’s illness made him pessimistic and fearful. “I think you’re exaggerating,” she said; “old age is a long way off; besides, it ‘s likely we won’t have children.” Zureda shook her head. “It doesn’t matter,” he replied; “the children may not come, but what if would come?… As for old age taking a long time to arrive, you’re mistaken; right now, do you think I have the agility, the vigor, and that same joy with which I went to work at twenty-five?… Oh! Old age is approaching, and fast. That’s why I repeat that it’s necessary to save. So, after some time, when I can no longer operate the machines, I’ll open a mechanic’s workshop; and if I die suddenly, but leaving you fifteen or twenty thousand pesetas, it will be easy for you to establish a good washing and ironing shop in a central location, which is what you understand. Zureda added several other reasons to what he had said, all well -considered and discreet, with which the young woman was convinced. When the machinist spoke thus, he already had a plan in place. Among the people who came to visit him during his illness was Manolo Berlanga, bound to him by ties of fraternal friendship. Berlanga worked in a silversmith’s shop on Paseo de San Vicente; he had no relatives and earned a decent living. The silversmith had repeatedly expressed to Zureda his desire to find a decent house where he could live quietly and with his family, with a boarding fee of four or five pesetas. “Let’s suppose,” Amadeo continued, “that Manolo gave us five pesetas; that’s thirty duros a month; so the house costs eight, so we’re left with twenty-two duros, with which, and a few more that I’ll contribute, we can all live quite comfortably. ” Rafaela nodded, interested in the excitement that this new life would bring. The silversmith was a friendly, green-mouthed young man who chatted a lot and played the guitar very well. “If there’s room for him, yes there is,” he replied; “what room would we give him? ” “The alcove off the dining room. ” “I was thinking about that right now; but it’s very small and has no light…” Zureda shrugged. “It’s good for sleeping,” he exclaimed, “… If it were a woman, the matter would vary, but men everywhere are accommodated. The following day, at the request of the engineer, Rafaela wrote to Berlanga, begging him to come and see him. The silversmith kept the appointment punctually. He looked twenty-eight years old: he wore clean corduroy trousers, very tight around the waist and well buttoned, and a dark fur coat with an astrakhan collar and cuffs. He was of medium height and moderately built; his face was pale, his manner restless, and his conversation was lively and profuse. Rafaela looked for an excuse to leave the room, and the two men were able to chat freely and come to an agreement. “As for you,” said Berlanga, “I’m happy to give five pesetas for my lodging, and more, if necessary.” “Thank you,” replied Zureda. It’s not about trading with you; it’s about all of us helping each other like good brothers. That night, after dinner, Rafaela removed the useless furniture from the dining room alcove and swept and scrubbed it carefully. The next day she got up early to buy an iron bedstead with a box spring and a wool mattress from a neighboring pawnshop, which she then painstakingly assembled and furnished, leaving it very soft and luxurious. The room’s furnishings were completed with two chairs, an iron washbasin, and a small table covered with a green baize tablecloth. The young woman then dressed and combed her hair to receive her guest, who arrived in the middle of the afternoon with his luggage: this consisted of a briefcase where the silversmith kept the tools of his trade, a trunk, and a small barrel full of a certain vintage wine that, according to Berlanga, after dinner, amid the expansive joy of the coffee and the cigar Zureda had given him, had been given to him by a tavern owner friend of his… Several days passed, which were unusually joyful for the engineer and his wife , for the silversmith was a man of cheerful initiative and very fond of raising his glass, so that his normally fertile conversation took on hyperbolic colors and Andalusian exuberances. After dinner, all of Berlanga’s cocky wit aroused loud explosions of hilarity in Amadeo; when he laughed, Zureda He leaned his massive back against the back of his chair, and at intervals, as if to emphasize the gurgles of his laughter, he would pound the table with his fists. Then he would slowly give his opinion, and if he needed to advise Berlanga, he did so in a paternal, good-natured, and patient manner. Completely recovered, Amadeo returned to work. That morning, as he said goodbye to his wife, she asked him: “What kind of car are you driving? ” “La Negra.” “What a coincidence! We’ll see if anything bad happens to you. ” “Bah! Why? I know her well.” He hugged Rafaela, pressing her affectionately against his brave and noble chest. Suddenly, an insane, cruelly grotesque idea struck his spirit: that night he would spend awake and outdoors, on the tandem of the train, while back in Madrid, under the same roof as his wife, another man would sleep. But this bastard distrust lasted barely a second; the driver thought that Berlanga, though boisterous and dissipated, was, at heart, a brotherly friend incapable of such a terrible betrayal. Rafaela accompanied her husband to the stairs, and there they once again became passionately involved with the heated kisses and hugs of their farewell. When he urged him to wrap up warmly and remember her a lot, the girl’s dark eyes filled with tears. “How good she is!” Zureda murmured. And in his naive nobility, remembering the poisonous thought that had assailed him moments before, he was ashamed of himself. Manuel Berlanga’s life was highly uneven; he liked women and wine, and many nights, well into the wee hours, he returned home completely drunk. This always happened during Zureda’s absences . The next morning, the silversmith woke up refreshed and went contritely to the kitchen, where Rafaela was preparing breakfast. “Are you angry with me?” She reprimanded him maternally and advised him to be formal; he laughed it off. “Leave me alone!” he would say. “I don’t like formality; it’s one of the many antipathies that marriage casts upon us. Aren’t you serious enough with Amadeo’s? In men, love is often nothing more than the carnal obsession produced by the repeated and constant sight of the same woman. In every laugh, in every attitude of the woman who walks around them, there is a grace that at first slips unnoticed, and then, by virtue of a phenomenon that could be called “accumulation,” becomes more pronounced and affirmed until it suddenly emerges, enveloping and conquering. One morning, Manolo Berlanga was in the dining room eating breakfast before leaving for his workshop; Rafaela, with her back to him, was scrubbing the hallway floor. “How hard you work, comadre!” the silversmith exclaimed playfully. She responded to the remark with a silvery laugh and continued her work; sometimes hunched over, almost sitting on her heels, other times with her bust extended forward, in a violent attitude that depressed the fragility of her ringed waist and inflated the swelling of her jiggling bottom. Until then, the silversmith hadn’t noticed that oft- repeated scene; but he had barely experienced its sensual power when a flame of desire ignited within him. “She’s beautiful!” he thought. And he continued looking at her, reviewing in his vicious imagination the perfections of that flower of flesh, vibrant and soft. His reverie continued. Suddenly, with the abruptness of a bad mood, he stood up. “See you later,” he said. On the stairs, he greeted a neighbor and lit a cigarette. By the time he reached the entrance, he had forgotten about Rafaela. But his desire resurfaced later, at lunchtime, as he surreptitiously observed the young woman’s bare forearms. They were robust and shapely, and the flesh was luxuriantly bunched beneath the fabric of the sleeves rolled up at the elbow. “You didn’t comb your hair today,” Berlanga said. She replied, laughing with that voluptuous frankness of women who They have beautiful teeth. “You’re right; you have to take care of everything; it’s just that I haven’t had time. ” “Don’t worry about it,” replied the gallant silversmith. “This way, with their hair disheveled and their arms exposed, beautiful women look their best. ” “Are you speaking frankly? ” “Absolutely frankly. ” “Then you have the temperament or the makings of a married man. ” “Me? ” “Yes. ” “Why?” She laughed again, joyfully and coquettishly. “Because you know that, generally, and to the discredit of marriage, married women, when dealing with their husbands, take little care to appear pretty.” They continued chatting, and through their deliberate and mischievous conversation, peeped through the mutual sympathy that was stealthily enrapturing their will. She fixed her eyes on the clock on the sideboard. “Eight o’clock; what will Amadeo do now?” “According to him,” replied Berlanga, “when did he arrive in Bilbao? ” “Today, in the morning. ” “Then he’ll have slept all day, and now he’ll be tucked away in some café playing dominoes. Meanwhile, we’re here… ” “Are you feeling bad? ” “Me?” And he added slowly, looking at Rafaela with expressive intensity: “Much better than him!” Then, while he drank his cup of coffee, the silversmith emptied his wages for the week onto the table. He began to count: “Two, two, four… nine, eleven… thirty-eight pesetas! A bad week! I can say I haven’t even earned enough wine.” He gathered seven duros, which, stacked in a tiny silver column, he handed to Rafaela. “Here you go.” She replied, blushing, as if offended by that hostile distance, always a little, like that of debtor to creditor, which seemed to fix the money between them. “What are you giving me here? ” “Oh! What’s the matter? Don’t I pay weekly? Well, that’s it; my week: seven days, at five pesetas, thirty-five pesetas straight; just like these!” The coins clinked between his agile fingers, accustomed to handling cards. He added: “Today is Saturday, so… the account will be settled immediately; I have three pesetas left for extraordinary expenses: tobacco, streetcars… I’m going to have fun!” With a stately, protective, and friendly gesture, Rafaela returned Berlanga’s money. “Next week,” she said, “you’ll pay me. Fortunately, if I don’t have five duros to spare now, I’m not short either. ” The silversmith reiterated his offer, although weakly and only in that measured proportion that he deemed necessary to look good. He then rose from the table, and while he was running his hands along his legs to smooth out the ugly convexity of his kneecaps, and standing in front of the mirror, straightening his waistcoat and straightening his tie, he exclaimed: “Do you know what I’m thinking? ” “You say so. ” “I dare not. ” “What? ” “What if you get angry? ” “Or not… ” “Do you promise me? ” “On my word of honor; you, whatever you may say, cannot upset me. ” “And that? ” “I understand. ” “Ah, come on! Because you don’t pay attention to me, eh? You think little of me… ” “On the contrary, I think very highly of you…” She looked at him provocatively and proudly, stirred to her deepest core by a whim so stubborn, so all-encompassing, that it almost seemed like love. The silversmith replied, smugly: “Then, since we have money and we’re alone, why don’t we go to the ball tonight?” The young woman’s whole Goyaesque, genuinely Madrid-esque body vibrated with joy. It had been a long time since she had enjoyed herself like this; ever since she married, Zureda, formal and not very inclined to party, had not wanted to take her to any dance, not even a masked one. A strong rush of joyful visions invaded her memory. Ah, her good Sundays as a single woman!… On Saturday nights, after leaving the workshop, she and her companions They would meet the next day: sometimes at the snack bars in La Bombilla; other times at those in Cuatro Caminos, or at the classic Ventas del Espíritu Santo… And once there, what laughter, what joy, what strange emotion of curiosity and fear they felt, along with the desire of the man who approached to dance with them… Agile, flexible, transfigured, Rafaela stood up. “You wouldn’t be as capable of taking me as I was of going. ” “No?” replied the silversmith. “Right now!… We’re going to La Bombilla and we’re not leaving until we’ve spent our last peseta.” In a bound, the young woman fled from the dining room, put a silk scarf on her head, and gracefully threw a carpeted shawl over her shoulders. She reappeared immediately. As she walked, her heavily starched, very white petticoats fluttered crisply over her patent-leather boots, raised at the heels and with a very sharp point. She approached Berlanga and, taking him familiarly by the arm, said: “I warn you that I’ll pay half the bill.” The silversmith shook his head from left to right, denying it. She added categorically: “On that condition, I’m leaving the house. Aren’t we both going to have fun? Well, it’s only fair that we both pay for the party equally.” Berlanga accepted the friendly agreement, and once they were out on the street, they got into a carriage. At La Bombilla, where they ate a hearty dinner and danced a lot, they stayed until dawn. They started back on foot, slowly and arm in arm. Rafaela, who had drunk more than she should, often needed to stop and, dazed, would rest her head on the silversmith’s chest. Manuel Berlanga, beside himself with rage and a little drunk, would ogle her. “You’re so pretty!” he murmured. “Really?” “May I go blind if I lie.” Pretty, no, that’s an understatement; very pretty, yes; gorgeous… more gorgeous than all the women put together. And she, astutely, to show him that she hadn’t heard him, stammered: “How dizzy I am!” Suddenly, Berlanga exclaimed: “If it weren’t for the fact that Zureda and I are friends…” There was a silence. The silversmith, perking up, added: “Rafaela… be frank: isn’t it true that Amadeo is in our way?” She looked at him fixedly, and then, as if in reply, raised her handkerchief to her eyes. Nothing more happened. Little by little, over the uniform passage of several days, Manuel Berlanga became convinced that Rafaela had large, expressive eyes, small, fine-legged feet, a very graceful gait, and well-shaped, full breasts; and he even thought he could detect in her the desire, excessively tempting, to seem pretty to him. The silversmith finally realized what was clearly in his conscience, something that must have caused him both joy and fear. “I’ve excelled!” he thought. “I’ve excelled! Am I not in love with that woman like a beast?” Finally, his ill-tempered passion broke loose. That night, Zureda arrived. He had barely left the workshop when Manolo Berlanga hurried to her house. From the reception room, the silversmith, unable to bear the burden of his evil thoughts, asked: “And Amadeo, has he come?” Rafaela replied: “He won’t be fifteen minutes; it’s nine o’clock. The train has already arrived; I heard it whistle…” Berlanga entered the dining room and saw that the young woman was making his bed. She approached: “Do you want help?” “Thank you very much…” Suddenly, without knowing what he was doing, he grabbed her by the waist. She tried to defend herself by turning her back and pushing against him with her hips. He murmured, kissing her anxiously: “Come on, quickly… come on… before he arrives. ” And then, after a brief moment of silent struggle: “My soul… are you convinced?… If it had to be!” Truly, Zureda’s wife resisted very little. A year later, Rafaela gave birth to a boy, whom Manolo Berlanga sponsored, and who, by the unanimous will of his parents, was to be named Manuel Amadeo Zureda. The christening was splendid; more than two thousand reales were spent on him. How joyful, how rosy, how beautiful! There was Manolín!… The driver, whom everyone congratulated, was crying with joy. Chapter 19. Manolín was about to turn three; he was adorable, talkative, and friendly. His fleshy, white face, even whiter because of its contrast with the pitch black of his hair, blended with the physiognomic features of different people: the mischievous nose and the mischievous line of his lips belonged to his mother; from his father, he undoubtedly inherited the thoughtful forehead and the sturdy anatomy of his jaws; and he also reminded him of his godfather in the agile build of his body and the way he placed his feet when he walked. As if the clever little boy, in order to immediately win everyone’s affection, had made a point of resembling all the people who had been closest to him at the baptismal font. Zureda adored Manolín, laughed at all his jokes, spent hours lying on the flagstones of the passageway, playing with him; Manolín pulled his tie and mustache, hit him, broke his watch glass; the engineer wasn’t angry; on the contrary, he loved him more, as if his entire rough and noble soul were melting in love. One afternoon, Rafaela went to see Amadeo off, who was leaving on the 7:5 express; she was carrying the child in her arms. From the tandem, Pedro, the stoker, made the mother and child laugh with outlandish grimaces. “That toothache face!… That stomachache face !” he would say. A bell rang and the stationmaster’s trembling whistle blew. “Give me Manolo!” Zureda shouted. He wanted to kiss him. The little boy stretched out his little arms toward his father. “Take me, take me!” stammered his weak little tongue, full of affection and grace. Poor Zureda! At that moment, the idea of parting from the child broke her heart; she couldn’t leave him, she couldn’t… Unconsciously, while with one hand she clutched Manolín to her chest, with the other she pressed the starting handle and the train pulled away. Rafaela, frightened, ran down the platform, shouting: “Give it to me, give it to me!” But now, even if Zureda had wanted to give it back to her, she wouldn’t have been able to. Rafaela ran to the edge of the platform; there she stopped. From the darkness of the coal car, Pedro laughed and gestured goodbye. The young woman returned home crying. Manolo Berlanga had just arrived; he had been drinking and was in a bad mood. “What’s wrong?” he said. Hiccuping, inconsolable, Rafaela recounted what had happened. “And that’s all?” interrupted the silversmith; “You look like an idiot!” If they ‘ve left, so much the better; that way they’ll leave us in peace for a while.” “I wonder if they wouldn’t come back!” He imperatively ordered dinner. “Well,” he said, “do me a favor and stop sniffling and feed me, I’m in a hurry. ” Rafaela began to light the fire; meanwhile, she couldn’t stop crying and talking; her grief and rage melted into an interminable monologue. “My darling son, what do you think?… Should I take him out there so the little angel catches pneumonia?… What a stupid man, how stupid, how stupid!… Then they say: when women are the way we are, it’s not without reason. My darling son! I don’t want to remember how cold the poor thing is going to be tonight… My son, my blood, my mother’s heart, my mother’s little heart!” Her angry hands knocked over the oil bottle, which fell from the stove to the floor, shattering into pieces; at which point Rafaela’s fury reached its climax. “Damn my soul, I don’t know what I’m doing! That guy, that pig of a husband… the devil forbid I ever see him again… And now how am I going to cook? I’ll have to go to the store. Look if my mother hadn’t given birth to me, how well-off we’d all be… how well-off!” Tired of listening to her, the silversmith entered the kitchen, his step slow, his fists clenched in the pockets of his fur coat, his face sullen. “Are you planning on spending the night talking?” he said. “I’ll spend it however I please; what do you think? ” “Shut up now,” Berlanga shouted, “or I’ll break your mouth.” He could not repress his anger, and adding the villainous action to the clumsy one threat, he brought down several blows on his lover’s head. Rafaela stopped crying, and through her clenched teeth the most vulgar insults hissed. “Pimp… bastard… you dare to have sex with women!… Coward… faggot… if all you have of a man is your figure!” And he babbled: “Here… here, you filthy woman…” The repugnant scene lasted a long time; Rafaela, cowed, her nose and lips covered in blood, stopped speaking; in the silence of the kitchen, the reckless kicks with which the silversmith battered his victim against a corner resounded in confusion. Having accomplished his sad deed, Manuel Berlanga left and did not return until dawn. He went into his room and went to bed in the dark, sorrowful for his misdeed. He tried to console himself: after all, the blame for what had happened was not entirely his; Rafaela’s intemperance and the wine did more than half the work; men, when they drink, become brutes… The young woman had retired to her bedroom; at intervals, Berlanga heard her sigh, with those long, broken sighs that come from the sleep of children who have cried themselves to sleep. The silversmith called out: “Rafaela… ” Silence responded to his voice; a few minutes passed. The silversmith repeated his call, and that name, on his lips, seemed a command: “Rafaela!” He had to call her two more times. Finally, as if in a grunt, the young woman replied: “What do you want?” The silversmith smiled proudly; that question was equivalent to a pardon; the sweet moment of reconciliation was near. “Come,” he said. There was another pause, during which the wills of the two lovers must have collided and battled, with strange magnetisms, in the stillness of the dark house. “Come here, girl!” the silversmith repeated, softening his voice. And after a moment: “Don’t you want to come?” Another minute passed; all women, even the most uneducated and simple, possess to perfection the sorcerous secret of knowing how to make themselves expected. Then Berlanga heard Rafaela’s bare feet glide along the path. The young woman reached the silversmith’s bedroom, and in the darkness her exploring hands collided with those Manuel extended to receive her. “What do you need?” she asked spitefully and humbly. “Lie down.” She obeyed. There were many kisses, exchanged by him, and then Berlanga’s voice , asking, domineering and affectionately: “Are you going to be good?” Amadeo Zureda returned two days later; he was very satisfied; Manolín, during the trip, had behaved like a little man; She didn’t cry; she ate everything they gave her, and slept like a marmot on the coals of the tandem. As he kissed his wife, the driver noticed that she had a purple spot on her forehead. “This is a blow,” he said; “have you quarreled with someone?” She hesitated. “No, man; who would I have quarreled with… let alone hit me?… The very night you left, the oil bottle, which was on a shelf, fell when I went to pick it up, and it hit me here. ” “And this scratch? ” “Which one?… Ah, yes, the one on my lip!… I got it with a pin. ” “How awful! Little girl, be careful!” The driver didn’t see how Manolo Berlanga, who was present there, was biting his mustache to hide a vile laugh; the poor man didn’t suspect a thing; he was blind; Even if he hadn’t loved Rafaela, his love for Manolín was enough to blind him. Chapter 20. But the truth is very powerful. Amadeo Zureda began to notice that something strange was happening around him; slowly and without knowing why, he found himself somewhat distant from his companions, who were looking at him and treating him as they had never done before; it was as if they were demanding from his face the confession of a comical secret that he undoubtedly kept very hidden and concealed, but that everyone knew; it was a complex emotion of silence and curiosity that isolated him from them and seemed to imbue him with an inexplicable ridiculousness. He ended up worrying about this phenomenon. –Have I changed? Am I seriously ill… or am I very ugly and no one dares to tell me?… Near the station, near the Manzanares River, there was a picnic area where the platform porters and some engine drivers and stokers used to gather. The tavern belonged to Señor Tomás, who had been a bullfighter in his youth and retained from that profession of valor and gallantry the poised, rugged character and nobility of heart. Señor Tomás spoke little, and for those who knew him intimately, his words had the authority of writing. He was a tall old man, with athletic shoulders and hands, dressed in corduroy breeches and Andalusian black cloth jackets, and wore a wide leather belt with a silver buckle over the sash with which he covered his swollen belly. That afternoon, Señor Tomás was enjoying the sun at the door of the tavern when Zureda passed by. The tavern keeper gestured to the engineer, and when he had approached, he exclaimed, looking him straight in the eye: “We need to talk.” Zureda flinched; through his guts, like a cold wind, the icy, stealthy vibration of a bad feeling had just passed. Recovering himself, he answered: “Whenever you want.” They re-entered the tavern, where there were no customers at the time. A high wooden pedestal painted red and crowned with bottles surrounded the room; hanging from the wall was the stuffed head of the bull from which Señor Tomás received the tremendous goring that tore one of his legs and forced him to remove his bullfighting suit forever. In the background, behind the polished counter, over which a trickle of water perpetually sang, the meter had fallen asleep. The two men sat down at a table; the tavern keeper clapped his hands. “Hey, kid!” he exclaimed. The measurer came. “Were you in charge? ” “He’s bringing some olives and two glasses of wine.” There was a long pause. Señor Tomás puffed at the cigar that was smoking between his lips with greedy puffs; a grim concern hardened his shaved, sallow, fleshy face beneath the white hair, combed and curled neatly over his forehead. “I,” the innkeeper began, “don’t like two men to argue, because between people of heart there is no quarrel that isn’t serious; but I also can’t allow an honest man with his courage to be a laughingstock to anyone. Do you understand me?” Amadeo Zureda turned pale, then red. Yes, he understood; they had called him to tell him a terrible mystery; he felt that the emotion of emptiness that had accompanied him for some time was about to be explained, and he trembled; something black and enormous hovered over his head; one of those tragic truths capable of splitting a life in two. “I don’t know how to speak, nor do I like to speak,” continued his interlocutor. ” That’s why I don’t ramble, but call things by their name; because everything in this world, Amadeo, mark you well, has a name. ” “That’s right, Señor Tomás… ” “Good; and I’m one of those who go straight to the truth as they used to go straight to the bull: by the straightest route, which is best because it’s shortest. ” “That’s it… ” “Good; I love you well; I know you’re a hard worker, I know you’re one of those good people who, to earn their bread, aren’t capable of taking any ugly path; I also know, because it’s written on your forehead, how you are a man who knows how to close his fist when arguing and put his soul into his bandolier when necessary. I know all this. For that very reason, I don’t allow anyone to make fun of you. ” “Thank you, Señor Tomás… ” “Good; Here, in my house, listen carefully, here in my house it has been said that your wife is having relations with Manuel Berlanga. The gazes of the innkeeper and the driver met, and they remained fixed on each other for a moment; then Zureda’s eyes widened, bulging. Suddenly he stood up and the square nails of his fingers dug into the wood of the table. His white lips, covered with foamy saliva, murmured haltingly, as if in a spasm of resentment: “That’s a lie, Señor Tomás, a lie… and I’ll break your heart if you… and if the Mother of God comes down to tell me that. That’s a lie!” Completely self-possessed, without a grimace on his face, the innkeeper replied: “Fine; you find out what is true or false in this matter, because you already know that the truth is as important as the lie that is told. And if it suits you to say that you learned it all from me, say so, because I stand by my words here and everywhere.” The innkeeper fell silent, and Amadeo Zureda, with his elbows on the table, remained motionless, idiotized, his mouth half-open. After a few moments his thoughts began to calm down, and as they quieted and became more coordinated, an irresistible morbid curiosity to know, to torment himself by inquiring about details, invaded him. “And has that been discussed here?” ” Right here. ” “When? ” “More than once, and more than twenty times; and they’ve said something worse: they said Berlanga beat your wife, that you knew about it, that you were aware of everything from the very beginning, and that if you put up with it it was for convenience, because that Berlanga was helping you pay for the house.” The arrival of two porters interrupted the conversation. Señor Tomás concluded: “So… now you know everything!” Zureda’s first impulse upon leaving the inn was to head home, question Rafaela, and, by fair means or foul, wring out the truth about her relationship with Berlanga. But he changed his mind; matters like that shouldn’t be rushed; it was better to proceed cautiously, wait, and find out slowly and for himself. When he arrived at the station, it was six o’clock; he found Pedro on the platform. “What train do we have today?” Amadeo asked. “La Negra,” replied the stoker. “Cursed!… It had to be “La Negra”! It was indeed a terrible journey, bristling with internal conflicts and struggles with the rebellious engine; a diabolical journey that Amadeo Zureda would remember all his life. In accordance with the plan of prudence he had outlined, the engineer applied himself to observing the way Rafaela and Manolo Berlanga spoke to each other, and after much tortured attention, he found nothing in the frank cordiality of their relationship that exceeded the limits of a good friendship. Ever since Berlanga had become Manolín’s godfather, the silversmith and Rafaela, yielding to Amadeo’s own requests, had agreed to use the familiar form of address; but that fraternal form of address, justified by the three years they had been together, did not seem to conceal any sinful secret. However, Zureda’s jealousy was growing, seizing on every pretext, using even the smallest things to thrive and imbue the driver’s every thought with a vampiric urge. It was a feeling that grew in Zureda due to the obsession caused by the constant vision of the suspected affront, just as it was from obsession that Manolo Berlanga’s love for Rafaela was born. Corporal Amadeo became convinced that his spying abilities were very limited; he lacked cunning, dissimulation, and that instinct for divination, a kind of second-sightedness, which allows one to get quickly and directly to the bottom of things. Given his rude nature, refractory to all sorts of diplomatic trickery, it was better to address the matter face to face. Once this resolution was reached, he felt his anxieties calm and a soothing emotion of peace flow through him. The driver spent the day reading quietly, waiting for night to arrive. Rafaela was sewing in the dining room, with Manolín asleep on her lap. Half an hour before dinner, Zureda tiptoed into the bedroom and from the nightstand took the sturdy hunting knife with its horn handle that she carried with her on all her travels. Then she put on a beret and wrapped a scarf around her neck because it was cold. Her heavy footsteps, which at that moment seemed to carry something fatal, echoed confidently in the hollow corridor . A little surprised, Rafaela asked, “Aren’t you having dinner here?” “Yes,” he replied. “I’m going to stretch my legs a bit; I’ll be back soon.” He kissed his wife, kissed Manolín, saying goodbye to them mentally, and left. In Señor Tomás’s tavern, he found Manolo Berlanga playing tute with several friends. The silversmith was drunk, and his voice, impertinent and defiant, dominated the others. Slowly, with a careless and taciturn air, the engineer approached the group. “Gentlemen, greetings. ” At first, no one answered him, for they were all absorbed in the mischievous back and forth of the cards. After the game was over, one of the players exclaimed: “Hello, Amadeo… I hadn’t seen you!… The ones I saw yesterday were your wife and your boyfriend; the boy is very handsome, and his mother is very pretty, wow!… I’m not saying this because you’re there. It’s obvious you win a lot and spend it on your wife!” “And if I didn’t do it that way,” Berlanga interrupted, offering his compadre a glass of wine, “there wouldn’t be enough someone who would; right, you, Amadeo…?” Zureda, impassive, drained the glass in one gulp. Then he ordered a flask of wine for those gathered there. “I challenge you,” he exclaimed to Berlanga, “to a game of mus. Antolín will be my partner.” The silversmith accepted. “Let’s go.” The four men settled around the table, and the game began. “I bid. ” “I pass… ” “I have. ” “No.” “Yes, I do.” “I bid too. ” “I don’t want…” From time to time the players interrupted their work to drink, and some daring moves were celebrated with great laughter. “Who’s bidding?” ” Me.” Suddenly, Amadeo Zureda, looking for a pretext to quarrel with his compadre, cheated and won a bet. Manolo Berlanga was surprised by the operation and, very excited, threw the cards to the floor. “That’s not done!” he shouted, “and no matter how close we are, I won’t allow it. ” All the players angrily supported the silversmith’s attitude. “No, sir, no… that’s not done!” they repeated. Calmly, Amadeo Zureda replied: “What have I done?” “Throw away this card, the five of clubs,” Berlanga replied, “and pick up a king, which you needed. Nothing more, nothing less… And that’s stealing!” At the silversmith’s furious insult, the engineer rushed to respond with a slap; the two men became furious like cats, and the table and chairs rolled on the floor. Señor Tomás hurriedly rushed over, and between him and the other players they managed to separate them. Upon entering the street, taking advantage of the tumult of onlookers that the din of the fight had gathered as if by magic in front of the tavern, Amadeo whispered in his compadre’s ear: “I’ll wait for you in front of San Antonio de la Florida.” “All right.” Moments later, and at the indicated place, they met again. “Let’s go where no one can see us,” said the driver. “Let’s go wherever you like,” replied Berlanga; “you drive.” They crossed the river and arrived at the small fields of Fuente de la Teja. There, under the trees, the shadows of twilight were denser. At a place they judged propitious, the two men stopped. Zureda looked around, and his eyes, accustomed to scanning the horizon of the roads, seemed to calm down. They were alone. “I brought you this far,” the driver began, “to kill you or for you to kill me.” Berlanga, who had drunk a lot and whose wine was bitter, looked at his interlocutor fixedly, his hands in the pockets of his fur coat, his brow furrowed, his head raised and defiant. He had just guessed what they were going to ask him, and the idea of being subjected to an interrogation revolted his pride. “It seems to me,” exclaimed the jacket, “that we’re going to have to say little.” And immediately, as if reading Zureda’s forehead, he added: “They’ve told you that I’m having relations with Rafaela… and you want to know the truth. ” “Yes,” replied Amadeo. “Well, they haven’t deceived you; why lie about it? It’s true.” He fell silent and looked at Zureda, whose eyes at that moment, so large and Black as they were, they had, by a miracle of anger, turned small and red. Neither man spoke further, nor was there any need to, since the words that would have precipitated them against each other had already been spoken. Zureda stepped back a few steps and drew his knife; the silversmith unfolded a switchblade. They attacked each other; it was an ancient struggle, a barbaric, silent hand-to-hand combat in which Manuel Berlanga was left dead. He fell backward, his face livid, his mouth twisted in an unforgettable grimace of hatred and pain. The engineer walked away at a brisk pace and was already crossing the bridge when a woman following him at a short distance began to scream. “Seize him, seize him, he’s killed a man!” A pair of Civil Guards stationed there, at the door of an inn, arrested Zureda, who allowed himself to be caught and tied up without resistance. Rafaela went to see him in jail, and the driver, out of love for her and her son, received her affectionately, assuring her that he had quarreled with Berlanga over a gambling issue. Fourteen or fifteen months later, before the court, he testified the same thing: they were playing mus, and he, to tease his friends, threw away one of the cards he was holding and picked up another; Berlanga reproached him for the uncleanliness of his action, they exchanged words, and they remained challenged for later… Thus spoke Amadeo Zureda, in his chivalrous determination not to cast even the slightest shadow on the reputation of the woman he adored. Who could have behaved more nobly than he did? The prosecutor delivered an overwhelming, implacable report. The jury sentenced Amadeo Zureda to twenty years in prison. Chapter 21. Driven by poverty, which arrived quickly, Rafaela had to move to a small town in Castile, where she had relatives. They were poor people who worked the land and struggled to make a living. To justify her arrival, the young woman invented a story: she said that Amadeo, as a result of a disagreement he had with his employers, had been fired from the station and had emigrated to Argentina, because they assured him that engine drivers there earned good wages. She then decided to leave Madrid, where housing and food were very expensive. She concluded judiciously: “When Amadeo writes to me telling me he has a job, I will go join him.” Her relatives believed her and, taking pity on her, found her a job. Every day, at first light in the morning, Rafaela went to wash her clothes in the river, half a kilometer from the town. Thus, sometimes washing and ironing, and other times gathering firewood in the fields to sell, through sheer tenacity Rafaela managed to earn a daily wage of four to five reales. Two years passed. The local residents had learned from the pedestrian in charge of delivering the mail that the envelopes of all the letters Rafaela received were written in the same hand and bore the stamp of the Ceuta Post Office. This news alarmed the neighborhood and sparked gossip, which the young woman discreetly cut short by confessing the truth: Amadeo Zureda was in prison; he had been taken there as a gambling act. And in speaking this way, she adopted the resigned, humble attitude of a model woman who, despite having suffered greatly, forgives the man she adored for all the harm he had done her. She was an unfortunate woman; the town, gossipy and compassionate, forgave her. Battered by time and misfortune, Rafaela’s former racy, petite beauty was rapidly fading: the sun burned her skin; the dust of the roads soiled her hair, once so clean and flowing; work deformed and hardened her hands, once better idle and polished. She had lost the habit of wearing a corset, and this accelerated the ruin of her body. Slowly her breasts slumped, her belly grew, her waist acquired a heavy curve. Her dresses too, one by one, were torn; the petticoats, the stockings, the pretty little patent leather shoes, bought in days of prosperity, disappeared in a sad parade. Rafaela, who had lost her urge to flirt, abandoned herself to misery and even went through the streets of the village with bare feet. This disorientation of willpower coincided with a serious weakness or blurring of memory. The poor woman was forgetting everything, and the memories she still retained were so disjointed and dull that they were insufficient to suggest any poignant emotion. She had never loved Berlanga; upon meeting him, she had felt a whim, a little unreasonable passion; but this amorous wandering quickly declined , and if she continued, it was due to spiritual idleness and fear of the silversmith, who was jealous and beat her a lot. Thus, his tragic death, far from causing her pain, brought her a pleasant, soothing surprise, liberating and relaxing. Zureda’s ordeal and her confinement within prison walls, if it wounded her deeply, it was not in her distracted love for the machinist, but in the comfortable and content rhythm of her life. Because Amadeo’s exile represented misery for her, the irreparable collapse of her future. On the other side of that crisis that tore her home apart, Rafaela, without realizing it, was old, forgetful, and apathetic. The intense dramatic upheavals she had suffered in such a short time had annihilated her vulgar spirit; she suffered no remorse, no exact notion of whether her past behavior had been bad or good, as if her conscience had dissolved into an imbecile stupor. The only thing that persisted in her was the maternal instinct to live and work so that Manolín could live as well. Some days, however, the unfortunate woman experienced a deep and icy reversal of memories, a poisonous epiphany of dark recollections that climbed suffocatingly up her throat. This generally occurred on the banks of the river, while washing, in the spiritual contemplation of a monotonous, purely mechanical task. Her eyes would then fill with tears, which slowly rolled down her cheeks and fell onto her hands, reddened by the hard work of the task and the cold caress of the water. Around
her, other washerwomen, observing her distress, whispered. “Do you see how she cries? ” “Poor woman! ” “Poor? Yes, yes… She wanted it… And fate, which is always just, gives to each what they deserve. Why didn’t she consider more carefully who she married? From time to time, at the bottom of the valley, which was enclosed on that side by an undulating line of blue mountains, a train would pass, and its shrill whistle, amplified and repeated here and there by the echoes, would break the silence of the plain. Some of the younger washerwomen would rise and, sitting on their heels, follow the rapid progress of the convoy with their eyes , and in their eyes there was a dreamy melancholy, a vision of distant, unseen cities. But Rafaela never raised her head to look at those trains, whose cry tore at her ears with the timbre of a familiar voice, and she continued washing, while her eyes, bathed in tears, devoured the mystery of the oblivion of the trickling waters . Despite the poor woman’s great physical and moral prostration, there were those who reflected on her. One man, a shoemaker by trade, named Benjamin dared to do so. He was already over fifty, a widower, and had two sons in the king’s service. Lord Benjamin’s business was doing mediocre; not all the townspeople wore shoes, nor did those who did feel much need to wear new, beautiful ones. Rafaela washed and ironed his clothes, and ironed a shirt for him on special days. From these small services, modestly but also punctually paid, their friendship was born. And this affection, peaceful and selfless at first, grew until it burned the shoemaker’s heart with the fire of love. “If you wanted,” Mr. Benjamin used to say to Rafaela, “we could come to an agreement. You’re alone, I’m alone… why not join forces?” She smiled with that disenchantment of souls that life, little by little, stripped of illusions. “You’re crazy, Mr. Benjamin. ” “Why? ” “Because…” “Let’s see, explain this: why am I crazy?” Rafaela, who didn’t want to anger him, because if she did, she’d lose a customer, answered evasively: “I’m already too old. ” “Not for me. ” “I’m ugly. ” “That’s a matter of taste. I, for example, really like you. ” “Thank you. Besides, what would the town say when they found out? And our children, Mr. Benjamín, what would they think of us?” “There are a thousand ways to cover up appearances; you love me, I’ll take care of the rest. ” Rafaela promised to think the matter through, and every afternoon, when she returned from work, Mr. Benjamín would ask her jokingly from his doorway. “And that, neighbor? ” “I’m fine with it,” he replied, laughing. “It seems the question is a bit difficult… ” “Yes! ” “But can it be fixed? ” “What do I know, Mr. Benjamín!” Sometimes it seems so… other times it seems not… Just wait!… But Rafaela’s soul was dead; nothing would revive her dreams. The shoemaker, after much effort, had to give up on her, and when he saw her pass by, he sighed, grotesque and romantic. Every first day of the month, Rafaela wrote Zureda a four-page letter, in which she recounted the small incidents of her meek and boring life. Through these letters, written on sheets of commercial paper, the prisoner learned of Manolín’s rapid physical progress, who at the time was twelve years old: he was quarrelsome, rebellious, lazy, to the point of still walking on a stick. There was no need to mention his fondness for stone-throwing; one day, for having severely injured another boy his age, the Civil Guard arrested him, and failing the diligent and paternal intervention of the priest, he was sleeping in jail. The mother always ended the paragraphs in which she described Manolín’s wild antics with this phrase: “I assure you I can’t tame him…” It was a statement of weariness that seemed to mask a threat and a prophecy. In one letter, the prisoner said: “The latest pardon, which I don’t know if you’ve heard about in the newspapers, has freed many comrades. I haven’t been so lucky. In any case, they’ve pardoned me five years. So, there are only six years separating us now.” Periodically, letters from Rafaela and those from the prisoner in Ceuta went back and forth. Two more years passed. But fate hadn’t yet tired of kicking Amadeo Zureda’s honorable shoulders. “Forgive me, dear Rafaela,” the prisoner wrote, “for the new displeasure I’m going to cause you; But by the life of our son, I swear to you that I have not been able to prevent the misfortune that, unexpectedly, and no one knows for how long, will prolong our separation. As you might imagine, among the rabble who arrive here from all the prisons of Spain, few saints come. I, although forced to live among them, understand that they are not my equals, and for that reason I try to keep myself isolated and not intervene in their jokes or their quarrels. The fact is that, at the end of last week, a handsome Andalusian by trade came here, sentenced to twelve years in prison for having killed a man and seriously wounded another. As soon as he saw me, he thought I was a meek fellow with whom he could show off, and he missed no opportunity to tease me. I kept quiet and, to avoid clashing with him, turned my back on him . Yesterday, at dinner time, he began to pick a fight with me; other inmates encouraged him with their laughter. “Listen, Amadeo,” he said to me, “why have they brought you here? ” I replied, looking him straight in the eyes, “For killing a man. ” “And why did you kill him?” he insisted. “I didn’t answer, and then he added something very ugly, very rude, which I don’t want to repeat. Suffice it to say that your name was involved in what he said. And, because that was the case, it was the last thing his lips said. I took out my knife—you know that, despite all the surveillance and searching, we’re all armed—and I shouted at him, “Defend yourself, because I’m going to kill you. ” We fought, indeed, and we fought well, because the young man was brave; but His bravery served him no purpose, and there he died. “Forgive me, Rafaela, my dearest, and make our son forgive me as well. This worsens my situation, for now they will judge me again, and I don’t know what punishment they will impose. I recognize that by killing that man I did wrong, but if I hadn’t, he would have killed me instead, which would have been much worse for all of us.” Months later, Zureda wrote: “These days my case has been heard. Fortunately, all the witnesses testified in my favor, which, together with the high opinion my superiors have of me, has greatly improved my situation. The prosecutor’s report was terrible, but that’s worthless. Tomorrow I’ll learn the sentence.” All of Amadeo Zureda’s letters were like this: noble, calm, as if dictated by the most stoic resignation. He never slipped anything into them that reminded Rafaela of her crime; In those pages, replete with equal and vigorous writing, there were no reproaches, no dejection, no desperate impatience. They were the admirable reflection of an iron will to whom misfortune, the most excellent mother of all knowledge, taught the difficult secret of waiting. Chapter 22. The same day Amadeo Zureda left prison, the mail brought him a letter from Rafaela, which began: “Yesterday Manolín turned twenty…” The former engine driver disembarked in Valencia, spent the night in an inn near the train station, and early the next day boarded the train that was to take him to Equis. After so many years of confinement, the old prisoner felt the nervous restlessness, the self-distrust, the cruel fear of fate that misfits usually experience whenever life offers them a new phase. Defeat frightens them and makes them pessimistic. They recall what they suffered and the futility of their struggles, and think: “This, which is now beginning, will be bad for me too…” Amadeo Zureda had changed greatly; on his face, tanned by the African sun, his white mustache stood out sadly; the serene gaze of his black eyes was enlarged by the expression of immense pain; the vertical crease between his eyebrows had deepened so much that it resembled a scar; his gaunt body, once plump and fleshy, hunched slightly as he walked. The resonant clatter of the car and the succession of panoramas brought back to Zureda’s memory the joys, long blurred in the distance of bygone years, of his good days as an engine driver. He remembered Pedro, the Andalusian fireman, and those two locomotives, “La Dulce” and “La Negra,” on which he had worked so hard. And an inner voice asked him: “What has become of all that?” He also thought of his home, and as he reassembled the facade and saw the balconies, he recalled the appearance of each room. Never had his memory, clouded by the grim and brutalizing life of the prison, delved so deeply into the past, nor had he so cleanly unearthed and reconstructed old memories. He thought of his son, of Rafaela and Manolo Berlanga, seeing them with their faces and clothes from that time, and he was surprised that the figure of the silversmith didn’t cause him any pain: in those moments, and despite the irreparable harm he had done, he felt no animosity toward him: all the resentments that had stirred in him until then were assuaged by an unknown and ineffable emotion of forgetfulness and mercy. The poor prisoner searched his conscience again and was once again amazed to discover no hatred within it. Indeed, freedom undoubtedly moralizes men. In Játiva, an elderly man boarded the car, in whose features the former driver thought he found traces of a friendly countenance. For his part, the newcomer also looked at Zureda, as if remembering. In this way , the two gradually drew closer in silence. They ended by examining each other affectionately, certain now that they knew each other. Amadeo Zureda was the first to speak: “I believe,” he said, “that we have seen each other somewhere… years ago… ” “That is what I have been pondering,” replied the person addressed. “The fact is,” the driver continued, “that I’m certain we’ve spoken many times. ” “Yes, yes… ” “That we’ve been friends. ” “Probably…” They continued looking at each other, bound by the same thought. “Have you lived in Madrid? ” “Yes; ten or twelve years. ” “Where?” “Near the Estacion del Norte, where I was employed. ” “Well, don’t say any more,” Zureda exclaimed, “because I was also a member of that company. I was a driver… ” “On what line? ” “Most recently, on the Bilbao line.” Slowly, silently, the memories emerged and merged in the vast blackness of oblivion of those twenty years. Amadeo Zureda took out his pouch and offered some tobacco to his interlocutor; And what neither the stranger’s appearance nor his voice had achieved until then, his way of taking the cigarette, preparing the cigarette, lighting it, and then placing it in the left corner of his lips accomplished instantly and as if by magic. The ex-convict’s memory was filled with light. “Now that’s it!” he exclaimed. “You’re Don Adolfo Moreno!” “Myself; that’s right…” “You were a street vendor on the Asturias line when I worked on the Bilbao line. Don’t you remember? Zureda… Amadeo Zureda… ” “Ah, yes!” The two men embraced. “I used to call you informally!” shouted Don Adolfo. “Yes, sir; and you can continue to do so. Of course!… There’s a reason time has flown by equally for both of them. ” The joy of the first moments having subsided, the former street vendor and the elderly driver grew sadder, recalling the many bitter experiences life had brought them. “I already knew of your misfortune,” said Don Adolfo, “and I felt it. These are the follies of youth that last an instant and then cost you your entire future. Why was it? ” Zureda replied calmly: “A matter of play. ” “It’s true!… They told me so.” Amadeo sighed; the peddler knew nothing, and it was likely that everyone was as ignorant as he about the true cause of Manuel Berlanga’s death. Don Adolfo asked: “Where have you been?” “In Ceuta. ” “A long time? ” “Twenty years and months. ” “Good heavens!… Have you just come from there? ” “Yes, sir. ” “You, evidently,” continued Don Adolfo, “have suffered more than I; but don’t think I’ve been very fortunate. Life is a beast that smites all who approach it… and beware if someone is born!… it has a swipe. I am a widower; It will soon be fifteen years since my poor little wife has been rotting earth; of my three daughters, the eldest married, the other two died. Now I’m retired, and I live in Equis with a sister-in-law, the widow of my brother Juan, whom I don’t know if you remember… Little by little, and with many circumlocutions, because trust is a timid virtue that quickly emigrates from souls severely punished by misfortune, Amadeo Zureda outlined his plans. He planned to settle in Equis with his wife; he had saved nearly two thousand pesetas from the prison, with which he hoped to buy a small house and half a bushel of good land. “I don’t understand farming,” he added, “but that’s like everything else; if you want to learn, you learn. Besides, my son, who is young and grew up in the town, can help me a lot.” Don Adolfo had wrinkled his brow with the thoughtful and grave expression of a man who remembers. “From what you’re saying,” he exclaimed, “I can see whoever your wife is.” A little embarrassed, because the ever-bloody image of his misfortune had not been erased from his memory, the former engine driver replied: “No doubt; the town must be small… ” “Very small. What’s your wife’s name? ” “Rafaela. ” “Yes, indeed!” replied Don Adolfo. “Rafaela, the laundress… ” “That’s right.” “I know her very well; and I know Manolo, her son, too. Brave young man!” Amadeo Zureda shuddered; he was afraid, cold; for a few moments he remained silent, not knowing what to say. Don Adolfo continued with blunt frankness: “This Manolo has a bad head, and he gives his poor mother, who is a saint, a lot of grief. I believe he even gives him a job!… I’ll tell you no more!” Livid, trembling, repressing a great desire to cry that had just assailed him, Amadeo asked: “Is it possible?… Is he that bad? ” “The lad is made of gold,” replied Don Adolfo; “he was going to die, and the Devil, to take him on, would have to think about it a lot: a drunk, a gambler, a womanizer, a brawler… the Indian is everything! ” And he affirmed: “He doesn’t seem like your son.” Amadeo Zureda did not reply, and putting his head close to the window, pretended to be distracted by the landscape. The old peddler’s declarations terrified him; he was ignorant of everything; Rafaela, in her letters, had said nothing to him; and he was amazed to see how fate besieged him and denied him that rest to which all working men, even the most miserable, have a right. Going back along the odious path of his memories, he arrived at the source of his misfortune. Twenty years before, Señor Tomás, when informing him of Rafaela’s relationship with Manuel Berlanga, had declared: “They say he’s beating her up.” And now, Don Adolfo, referring to Manolín, repeated the same words: “I believe he’s beating her up.” What mysterious connection could there be between these statements that seemed to establish a link of disgrace between the son and the dead lover? And the words of the old peddler rang again in Zureda’s ears and took a fateful hold on his soul: “Manolo doesn’t look like your son.” Without having read Darwin, Amadeo Zureda instinctively looked to the laws of inheritance for an explanation and consolation for the poison that was gnawing at him. He had never, not even as a youth, been fond of drinking, playing cards, or being a lapdog, much less a busybody and a braggart. Who, then, could have infused so many depravities into his son’s blood? Don Adolfo and Zureda got off at the Xàtiva station. Evening was fading ; there were only six or seven people on the platform. The elderly street vendor exclaimed, pointing with his hand to a woman and a young man who were approaching: “There are your people.” This time, upon seeing Rafaela, Amadeo didn’t hesitate: it was she, despite her swollen belly, her fleshy and sad face, her white hair… it was her! “Rafaela!” He would have recognized her among a thousand other women. They embraced tightly, weeping, with the immense emotion of joy and sorrow experienced by those who separated young and reunite in old age, on the other side of life. Then the driver hugged Manolo. “You look so handsome!” he stammered, when the pounding of his heart, calming a little, allowed him to speak. Don Adolfo said goodbye. “I’m in a hurry,” he said; “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He bowed and left. Amadeo Zureda, leading Rafaela to his right and Manolo to his left , left the station. “Is the town very far?” he asked. “Barely two kilometers,” she replied. “Then let’s go on foot.” They advanced slowly along the road that wound away between two vast expanses of cultivated, reddish land. In the distance, illuminated by the dying sun, appeared the small town; that miserable hamlet that Zureda had thought of so many times, as a beautiful refuge of peace, forgetfulness, and redemption. Chapter 23. Since Amadeo Zureda arrived in Equis, Rafaela did not return to the river. The old machinist did not want his wife to work; with what he earned as a blacksmith back in prison, they both had enough to live on. They did not speak of the past; one would think they did not remember it; nor why should they? Zureda had forgiven everything; his Rafaela, moreover, was no longer the same: the birdlike joy of her eyes, the waving blackness of her hair, the girlish agility of her body were gone; today, in her flabby and sad countenance, in the humble look, in the flaccidity of her face, The breasts, in the clumsy, fatty curves of her waist, held a painful abandonment, a tormenting pang of remorse. Following Don Adolfo’s advice, the ex-convict abandoned his idea of dedicating himself to farming, and on the best street in town, near the church, he set up a mixed carpentry and locksmith shop, where he shod a mule, repaired a cart, or fitted a new plowshare. Shortly after Zureda settled in, his modest business began to take a path of prosperity; very soon, his number of acquaintances grew; his troubling history as a prisoner seemed forgotten; everyone loved him; he was a good, affable man, with a sympathetic melancholy, who paid his small bills accurately and worked well. Amadeo Zureda felt his life pacifying, and that his future, until then stormy, was slowly beginning to reveal itself to him as a hospitable, clear, and easy country. The threatening tomorrow, which keeps men awake at night, was no longer a problem for him; his future was already cemented, regulated, foreseen; he would spend the remaining fifteen or twenty years of his life lovingly rounding out the little fortune he wished to bequeath to his Rafaela. Driven by this purpose, he rose with the sun and worked hard all day. In the afternoons, accompanied by a dog, a gift from Don Adolfo, he would go out to wander around the outskirts of town. One of his favorite walks was the cemetery. Zureda would push open the old gate of the cemetery, always open, sit on a broken millstone there, and light a cigar. Many crosses were blackened among the overgrown grass that carpeted the ground; the old man evoked his memories as a former engine driver and a recluse, and his weary will trembled. He looked around contentedly; there was his bed; What peace, what silence!… And he sighed deeply, possessed by the rare and soothing joy of dying. Among the old walls, gilded by the setting sun, that surrounded that garden of oblivion, one must have slept very well… The only thing that embittered Amadeo Zureda’s peaceful decline was his son: that Manolo, whom, through an excess, perhaps imprudent, of paternal love, he had redeemed the year before from military service, and whose vicious and wayward character was fanatically refractory to all discipline. Zureda tried in vain to teach him a trade; entreaties, threats, and discreet reflections all crashed before the young man’s irreducible and vagrant will. “If you don’t want to keep me,” Manuel would say, “fire me; I’ll know how to find them. ” Manolo frequently disappeared from the village and, absent and involved in mysterious adventures, spent his days. Individuals from other nearby towns said he was a gambler. One night he reappeared seriously wounded in the groin; the stab wound was deep. “Who hurt you?” Zureda asked. The young man replied, “That’s no one’s business; whoever it is, I’ll make sure, sooner or later, to give them what they deserve. ” To avoid legal complications, Amadeo Zureda kept quiet about what had happened. Weeks later, Manolo was fine. One morning, on the riverbank, the Civil Guard pair found the corpse of a man; the body bore several stab wounds. Every investigation carried out to discover the killer was in vain; the crime went unpunished. Only Amadeo Zureda, who, following the incident, had caught Manuel washing a blood-stained handkerchief in a basin, was certain that the perpetrator of that death was his son. And Don Adolfo’s sinister words returned to his spirit, crushing, maddening, piercing his skull: “It doesn’t seem like my son…” he mused. The lad’s unbridled life didn’t end there. Taking advantage of his mother’s affection and Amadeo’s meekness, there were rarely any days when he didn’t show that he was desperately in need of money. “I need a hundred pesetas,” he would say, “but very much so. If you don’t give them to me… well, that’s okay; I’ll look for them. But perhaps you’ll regret it.” then of not having given them to me. He was dominated by a passion for pleasure. When his mother advised him: “Why don’t you work, you bastard? Don’t you see your father?” The lad would reply: “Living isn’t working; to live like your father lives, it’s better to hang yourself. ” He treated Rafaela contemptuously and like a slave; when addressing her, he barely deigned to glance at her; he also spoke to his father sparingly and harshly. The worst of sons could not have behaved with more detachment. It seemed as if his wild soul, thirsty for pleasure, nursed the flames of instinctive resentment against his parents. One night, upon returning from the Casino where Don Adolfo, the apothecary, and other neighbors of a certain standing used to meet every Saturday, Amadeo Zureda found the door of his workshop ajar. That surprised him, and raising his voice, he began to call: “Manolo!… Manolo!” Rafaela answered from deep inside: “He’s not here. ” “Do you know if he’ll be back soon?… I’m just saying this so I don’t have to close up shop,” Zureda exclaimed. There was a brief silence. Finally, Rafaela replied: “You’d better close up shop.” The poor woman’s voice contained a hiccup of pain. Alarmed by a feeling of something terrible, the old machinist crossed the workshop and reached the back room. In the kitchen, sitting in front of the stove, was Rafaela, her hands humbly folded in her lap, her eyes full of tears, her white hair in disarray, as if a parricidal hand had been angrily twisted against them. Zureda attacked his wife and, grabbing her by the shoulders, forced her to stand up. “What happened?” he muttered. Rafaela’s nose was bloody, her forehead bruised, her hands covered in scratches. “What’s wrong?” the driver repeated. His eyes, though old and lifeless, burned again with that red light, a flash of death that had brought him to Ceuta twenty years before. Rafaela, frightened, tried to hide it. “It’s nothing, Amadeo,” she stammered, “it’s nothing… I’ll explain. It’s… you see… it’s just that I fell…” But Zureda, threatening her, almost with force, wrenched the truth from her. “It’s that Manolo hit you, huh?” She sobbed, still defending herself, not wanting to accuse the son of her soul. Vibrating with rage, the driver repeated: “Did he hit you?” Rafaela was slow to respond; she was afraid to speak; finally she confessed: “Yes… he hit me… oh, how horrible! ” “And why? ” “Because he needed money.” “Ah, the scoundrel!” And the old ex-convict’s anger and grief exploded in a lion’s roar that filled the kitchen. “And you gave it to him?” he added. “Yes. ” “How much? ” “Twenty-five pesetas. I resisted as much as I could, but… what was I going to do?… Oh, if you had seen him, you wouldn’t recognize him!… He was frightening; I thought he was going to kill me…” Saying this, he covered his eyes with his hands, as if, along with the filthy vision of what had just happened, removing the image of something similar, ancient and terrible. Zureda didn’t answer, afraid of revealing the frenzied agitation of his soul. The most ominous memories crowded around him. A long time ago, before he went to prison, Señor Tomás had told him in the course of an unforgettable conversation that Manuel Berlanga mistreated Rafaela. And years later, upon leaving prison, Don Adolfo Moreno told him something similar, referring to his son. Remembering this strange conjunction of opinions, Amadeo Zureda felt a bitter, inextinguishable resentment against the silversmith’s race; a cursed race, born, it seemed, to offend him and wound him in what he loved most. The next morning, Zureda, who had barely managed to sleep an hour or two, woke up early. “What time is it?” he asked. Rafaela, who had already gotten up, replied: “It’s almost six o’clock. ” “Is Manolo back? ” “No.” The machinist jumped out of bed, dressed as usual, and went down to the workshop. Rafaela spied on him; the old man’s apparent tranquility was Suspicious. Evening came and Manuel didn’t go to lunch. Night passed and the young man didn’t go to sleep. The couple went to bed early. Several days passed. One Sunday, Zureda was sitting at the door of his workshop; it was almost midnight and the women, some mantillated, others with headscarves , were attending mass. High in the Gothic tower, the bells rang out deafeningly and joyfully. A neighbor, passing by, said to the driver, “Manolo has appeared.” Calmly, Zureda replied: “When? ” “Last night. ” “Where did you see him? ” “At Honorio’s inn. ” “Good grief, the boy! He’s made a good fortune; he didn’t come this way…” The day ended without incident. The driver cautiously refrained from telling Rafaela that her son had returned. Shortly before dinner, and under the pretext of seeing Don Adolfo, who was waiting for him at the Casino, Amadeo Zureda left his house and headed for the tavern where Manolo used to meet with his friends. There, in fact, he found him playing cards. “I have to talk to you,” he said. The man he had addressed threw his cards on the table and stood up. He was tall, slender, and pleasant, and in the thin line of his lips and the piercing gaze of his green eyes there was something impertinent and challenging. The two men went out into the street and, without speaking, walked toward the outskirts of town. When he thought it appropriate, Amadeo Zureda stopped and, looking Manuel face to face: “I looked for you,” he said, “to tell you not to come back to my house, do you understand?” Manuel nodded. “It’s me who’s throwing you out of there, do you understand?” It’s me.” Because I don’t like dealing with wretches, and you are a wretch. And I’m not saying this to you as father to son, but as man to man… you know… in case my words offend you and you want revenge. That’s why, for no other reason, I’ve brought you here. Slowly, as he spoke, his fierce will grew more inflamed, his cheeks grew pale, and his fists clenched in the pockets of his fur coat . At the same time, Manuel’s rebellious blood was stirring. “Don’t make me talk,” he said. He made as if to leave. His voice, his gesture, the disdainful shrug with which he emphasized his words, were those of a lifesaver. It was as if the brash, brazen silversmith had been resurrected in him. Containing his anger, Zureda replied: “If you feel like quarreling, you’d be a fool to put it off until later. That’s why I came. ” “Are you crazy? ” “No.” “It seems so. ” “You’re mistaken. It’s just that I’ve heard that you’re in the habit of hitting your mother… and that, hitting your mother, you don’t pay for with all the blood, with all the filthy blood you have in your body…” Amadeo Zureda was afraid of himself. He was trembling. All the jealousy that years before had precipitated him against Berlanga now sprouted fresh, powerful, and deranged. His heart seemed a cauldron of infernal hatred . Manuel abruptly approached his father and, grabbing him by the lapels, said, “Are you going to keep quiet?” he murmured angrily, “or do you want to lose me?” Zureda’s response was a slap. Then the two men attacked each other, first with blows, then with knives. At that moment, the old man saw the same expression of hatred appear on the face of the man he believed to be his son, which twenty years before had spread to Manuel Berlanga. Those eyes, that mouth disfigured by a grimace of ferocity, that thin, feline body vibrating with rage, were those of the silversmith; the father’s gesture was exactly repeated by the son’s face, as if both countenances had been cast in the same die. And for the first time, after so long, the former machinist saw clearly… Stunned by the certainty of this new misfortune, no longer spirited to defend himself, the unfortunate man dropped his arms, at the same time that Manolo, beside himself, stabbed him mortally in the chest. His revenge accomplished, the parricide fled. Amadeo Zureda was taken, dying, to the hospital. There, that same That night, Don Adolfo came to see him. His grief was immense; so great that it inspired laughter. “Is what they told me true?” he repeated, crying. “Is it true?” The wounded man barely had the strength to squeeze his hand a little. “Goodbye, Don Adolfo,” he stammered. “I’ve learned what I needed to know; you told me, and I didn’t want to believe you; but now I recognize that you were right: Manuel was not my son…” Thank you for joining us in reading The Appointment: Novels by Eduardo Zamacois. We hope these stories have made you reflect on human nature, love, hope, and the decisions that mark the course of our lives. Zamacois, with his incisive pen and keen observation, leaves us with a literary testimony of great value. If you have enjoyed this story, we invite you to subscribe to our Now for Stories channel to discover more gems of universal literature. Until next time, when a new story will reunite us.
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