Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) by Vicente Blasco Ibanez

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Ulysses went down to take his place at table, looking in vain at the
other guests who had preceded him. Freya perhaps was going to come in
with the delay of a traveler who has just arrived and has been occupied
in freshening her toilet.

He lunched badly, looking continually at a great glass doorway
decorated with pictures of boats, fishes, and sea gulls, and every time
its polychromatic leaves parted, his food seemed to stick in his
throat. Finally came the end of the lunch, and he slowly sipped his
coffee. She did not appear.

On returning to his room, he sent the whiskered steward in search of
news.... The _signora_ had not lunched in the hotel; the _signora_ had
gone out while he was in the dining-room. Surely she would show herself
in the evening.

At dinner time he had the same unpleasant experience, believing that
Freya was going to appear every time that an unknown hand or a vague
silhouette of a woman pushed the door open from the other side of the
opaque glass.

He strolled up and down the vestibule a long time, chewing rabidly on a
cigar, and finally decided to accost the porter, an astute brunette
whose blue lapels embroidered with keys of gold were peeping over the
edge of his writing desk, taking in everything, informing himself of
everything, while he appeared to be asleep.

The approach of Ulysses made him spring up as though he heard the
rustling of paper money. His information was very precise. The
_signora_ Talberg very seldom ate at the hotel. She had some friends
who were occupying a furnished flat in the district of Chiaja, with
whom she usually passed almost the entire day. Sometimes she did not
even return to sleep.... And he again sat down, his hand closing
tightly upon the bill which his imagination had foreseen.

After a bad night Ulysses arose, resolved to await the widow at the
entrance to the hotel. He took his breakfast at a little table in the
vestibule, read the newspaper, had to go to the door in order to avoid
the morning cleaning, pursued by the dust of brooms and shaken rugs.
And once there, he pretended to take great interest in the wandering
musicians, who dedicated their love songs and serenades to him, rolling
up the whites of their eyes upon presenting their hats for coins.

Some one came to keep him company. It was the porter who now appeared
very familiar and confidential, as though since the preceding night a
firm friendship, based upon their secret, had sprung up between the
two.

He spoke of the beauties of the country, counseling the Spaniard to
take divers excursions.... A smile, an encouraging word from Ferragut,
and he would have immediately proposed other recreations whose
announcement appeared to be fluttering around his lips. But the sailor
repelled all such amiability, glowering with displeasure. This vulgar
fellow was going to spoil with his presence the longed-for meeting.
Perhaps he was hanging around just to see and to know.... And taking
advantage of one of his brief absences, Ulysses went off down the long
_Via Partenope_, following the parapet that extends along the coast,
pretending to be interested in everything that he met, but without
losing sight of the door of the hotel.

He stopped before the oystermen's stands, examining the valves of
pearly shells piled up on the shelves, the baskets of oysters from
Fusaro and the enormous conch-shells in whose hollow throats, according
to the peddlers, the distant roll of the sea was echoing like a
haunting memory. One by one he looked at all the motor launches, the
little regatta skiffs, the fishing barks, and the coast schooners
anchored in the quiet harbor of the island _dell' Ova_. He stood a long
time quietly watching the gentle waves that were combing their foam on
the rocks of the dikes under the horizontal fishing rods of various
fishermen.

Suddenly he saw Freya following the avenue beside the houses. She
recognized him at once and this discovery made her stop near a
street-opening, hesitating whether to continue on or to flee toward the
interior of Naples. Then she came over to the seaside pavement,
approaching Ferragut with a placid smile, greeting him afar off, like a
friend whose presence is only to be expected.

Such assurance rather disconcerted the captain. They shook hands and
she asked him calmly what he was doing there looking at the waves, and
if the repairs of his boat were progressing satisfactorily.

"But admit that my presence has surprised you!" said Ulysses, rather
irritated by this tranquillity. "Confess that you were not expecting to
find me here."

Freya repeated her smiles with an expression of sweet compassion.

"It is natural that I should find you here. You are in your district,
within sight of a hotel.... We are neighbors."

In order more thoroughly to amuse herself with the captain's
astonishment, she made a long pause. Then she added:

"I saw your name on the list of arrivals yesterday, on my return to the
hotel. I always look them over. It pleases me to know who my neighbors
are."

"And for that reason you did not come down to the dining-room?..."

Ulysses asked this question hoping that she would respond negatively.
She could not answer it in any other way, if only for good manners'
sake.

"Yes, for that reason," Freya replied simply. "I guessed that you were
waiting to meet me and I did not wish to go into the dining-room.... I
give you fair warning that I shall always do the same."

Ulysses uttered an "Ah!" of amazement.... No woman had ever spoken to
him with such frankness.

"Neither has your presence here surprised me," she continued. "I was
expecting it. I know the innocent wiles of you men. 'Since he did not
find me in the hotel, he will wait for me to-day in the street,' I said
to myself, upon arising this morning.... Before coming out, I was
following your footsteps from the window of my room...."

Ferragut looked at her in surprise and dismay. What a woman!...

"I might have escaped through any cross street while your back was
turned. I saw you before you saw me.... But these false situations
stretching along indefinitely are distasteful to me. It is better to
speak the entire truth face to face.... And therefore I have come to
meet you...."

Instinct made him turn his head toward the hotel. The porter was
standing at the entrance looking out over the sea, but with his eyes
undoubtedly turned toward them.

"Let us go on," said Freya. "Accompany me a little ways. We shall talk
together and then you can leave me.... Perhaps we shall separate
greater friends than ever."

They strolled in silence all the length of the _Via Partenope_ until
they reached the gardens along the beach of Chiaja, losing sight of the
hotel. Ferragut wished to renew the conversation, but could not begin
it. He feared to appear ridiculous. This woman was making him timid.

Looking at her with admiring eyes, he noted the great changes that had
been made in the adornment of her person. She was no longer clad in the
dark tailor-made in which he had first seen her. She was wearing a blue
and white silk gown with a handsome fur over her shoulders and a
cluster of purple heron feathers on top of her wide hat.

The black hand-bag that had always accompanied her on her journeys had
been replaced by a gold-meshed one of showy richness,--Australian gold
of a greenish tone like an overlay of Florentine bronze. In her ears
were two great, thick emeralds, and on her fingers a half dozen
diamonds whose facets twinkled in the sunlight. The pearl necklace was
still on her neck peeping out through the V-shaped opening of her gown.
It was the magnificent toilet of a rich actress who puts everything on
herself,--of one so enamored with jewels that she is not able to live
without their contact, adorning herself with them the minute she is out
of bed, regardless of the hour and the rules of good taste.

But Ferragut did not take into consideration the unsuitableness of all
this luxury. Everything about her appeared to him admirable.

Without knowing just how, he began to talk. He was astonished at
hearing his own voice, saying always the same thing in different words.
His thoughts were incoherent, but they were all clustered around an
incessantly repeated statement,--his love, his immense love for Freya.

And Freya continued marching on in silence with a compassionate
expression in her eyes and in the corners of her mouth. It pleased her
pride as a woman to contemplate this strong man stuttering in childish
confusion. At the same time she grew impatient at the monotony of his
words.

"Don't say any more, Captain," she finally interrupted. "I can guess
all that you are going to say, and I've heard many times what you have
said,--You do not sleep--you do not eat--you do not live because of me.
Your existence is impossible if I do not love you. A little more
conversation and you will threaten me with shooting yourself, if I am
not yours.... Same old song! They all say the same thing. There are no
creatures with less originality than you men when you wish
something...."

They were in one of the avenues of the promenade. Through the palm
trees and glossy magnolias the luminous gulf could be seen on one side,
and on the other the handsome edifices of the beach of Chiaja. Some
ragged urchins kept running around them and following them, until they
took refuge in an ornamental little white temple at the end of the
avenue.

"Very well, then, enamored sea-wolf," continued Freya; "you need not
sleep, you need not eat, you may kill yourself if the fancy strikes
you; but I am not able to love you; I shall never love you. You may
give up all hope; life is not mere diversion and I have other more
serious occupations that absorb all my time."

In spite of the playful smile with which she accompanied these words,
Ferragut surmised a very firm will.

"Then," he said in despair, "it will all be useless?... Even though I
make the greatest sacrifices?... Even though I give proofs of love
greater than you have ever known?..."

"All useless," she replied roundly, without a sign of a smile.

They paused before the ornamental little temple-shaped building, with
its dome supported by white columns and a railing around it. The bust
of Virgil adorned the center,--an enormous head of somewhat feminine
beauty.

The poet had died in Naples in "Sweet Parthenope," on his return from
Greece and his body, turned to dust, was perhaps mingled with the soil
of this garden. The Neapolitan people of the Middle Ages had attributed
to him all kinds of wonderful things, even transforming the poet into a
powerful magician. The wizard Virgil in one night had constructed the
_Castello dell' Ovo_, placing it with his own hands upon a great egg
(_Ovo_) that was floating in the sea. He also had opened with his magic
blasts the tunnel of Posilipo near which are a vineyard and a tomb
visited for centuries as the last resting place of the poet. Little
scamps, playing around the railing, used to hurl papers and stones
inside the temple. The white head of the powerful sorcerer attracted
them and at the same time filled them with admiration and fear.

"Thus far and no further," ordered Freya. "You will continue on your
way. I am going to the high part of Chiaja.... But before separating as
good friends, you are going to give me your word not to follow me, not
to importune me with your amorous attentions, not to mix yourself in my
life."

Ulysses did not reply, hanging his head in genuine dismay. To his
disillusion was added the sting of wounded pride. He who had imagined
such very different things when they should see each other again
together, alone!...

Freya pitied his sadness.

"Don't be a Baby!... This will soon pass. Think of your business
affairs, and of your family waiting for you over there in Spain....
Besides, the world is full of women; I'm not the only one."

But Ferragut interrupted her. "Yes, she was the only one!... The only
one!..." And he said it with a conviction that awakened another one of
her compassionate smiles.

This man's tenacity was beginning to irritate her.

"Captain, I know your type very well. You are an egoist, like all other
men. Your boat is tied up in the harbor because of an accident; you've
got to remain ashore a month; you meet on one of your trips a woman who
is idiot enough to admit that she remembers meeting you at other times,
and you say to yourself, Magnificent occasion to while away agreeably a
tedious period of waiting!...' If I should yield to your desire, within
a few weeks, as soon as your boat was ready, the hero of my love, the
knight of my dreams, would betake himself to the sea, saying as a
parting salute: 'Adieu, simpleton!'"

Ulysses protested with energy. No: he wished that his boat might never
be repaired. He was computing with agony the days that remained. If it
were necessary, he would abandon it, remaining forever in Naples.

"And what have I to do in Naples?" interrupted Freya. "I am a mere bird
of passage here, just as you are. We knew each other on the seas of
another hemisphere, and we have just happened to run across each other
here in Italy. Next time, if we ever meet again, it will be in Japan or
Canada or the Cape.... Go on your way, you enamored old shark, and let
me go mine. Imagine to yourself that we are two boats that have met
when becalmed, have signaled each other, have exchanged greetings, have
wished each other good luck, and afterwards have continued on our way,
perhaps never to see each other again."

Ferragut shook his head negatively. Such a thing could not be, he could
not resign himself to losing sight of her forever.

"These men!" she continued, each time a little more irritated. "You all
imagine that things must be arranged entirely according to your
caprices. 'Because I desire thee, thou must be mine....' And what if I
don't want to?... And if I don't feel any necessity of being loved?...
If I wish only to live in liberty, with no other love than that which I
feel for myself?..."

She considered it a great misfortune to be a woman. She always envied
men for their independence. They could hold themselves aloof,
abstaining from the passions that waste life, without anybody's coming
to importune them in their retreat. They were at liberty to go wherever
they wanted to, to travel the wide world over, without leaving behind
their footsteps a wake of solicitors.

"You appear to me, Captain, a very charming man. The other day I was
delighted to meet you; it was an apparition from the past; I saw in you
the joy of my youth that is beginning to fade away, and the melancholy
of certain recollections.... And nevertheless, I am going to end by
hating you. Do you hear me, you tedious old Argonaut?... I shall loathe
you because you will not be a mere friend; because you know only how to
talk everlastingly about the same thing; because you are a person out
of a novel, a Latin, very interesting, perhaps, to other women,--but
insufferable to me."

Her face contracted with a gesture of scorn and pity. "Ah, those
Latins!..."

"They're all the same,--Spaniards, Italians, Frenchmen.... They were
born for the same thing. They hardly meet an attractive woman but they
believe that they are evading their obligations if they do not beg for
her love and what comes afterward.... Cannot a man and woman simply be
friends? Couldn't you be just a good comrade and treat me as a
companion?"

Ferragut protested energetically. No; no, he couldn't. He loved her
and, after being repelled with such cruelty, his love would simply go
on increasing. He was sure of that.

A nervous tremor made Freya's voice sharp and cutting, and her eyes
took on a dangerous gleam. She looked at her companion as though he
were an enemy whose death she longed for.

"Very well, then, if you must know it. I abominate all men; I abominate
them, because I know them so well. I would like the death of all of
them, of every one!... The evil that they have wrought in my life!... I
would like to be immensely beautiful, the handsomest woman on earth,
and to possess the intellect of all the sages concentrated in my brain,
to be rich and to be a queen, in order that all the men of the world,
crazy with desire, would come to prostrate themselves before me.... And
I would lift up my feet with their iron heels, and I would go trampling
over them, crushing their heads ... so ... and so ... and so!..."

She struck the sands of the garden with the soles of her little shoes.
An hysterical sneer distorted her mouth.

"Perhaps I might make an exception of you.... You who, with all your
braggart arrogance, are, after all, outright and simple-hearted. I
believe you capable of assuring a woman of all kinds of love-lies ...
believing them yourself most of all. But the others!... _Ay, the
others!_... How I hate them!..."

She looked over toward the palace of the Aquarium, glistening white
between the colonnade of trees.

"I would like to be," she continued pensively, "one of those animals of
the sea that can cut with their claws, that have arms like scissors,
saws, pincers ... that devour their own kind, and absorb everything
around them."

Then she looked at the branch of a tree from which were hanging several
silver threads, sustaining insects with active tentacles.

"I would like to be a spider, an enormous spider, that all men might be
drawn to my web as irresistibly as flies. With what satisfaction would
I crunch them between my claws! How I would fasten my mouth against
their hearts!... And I would suck them.... I would suck them until
there wasn't a drop of blood left, tossing away then their empty
carcasses!..."

Ulysses began to wonder if he had fallen in love with a crazy woman.
His disquietude, his surprise and questioning eyes gradually restored
Freya's serenity.

She passed one hand across her forehead, as though awakening from a
nightmare and wishing to banish remembrance with this gesture. Her
glance became calmer.

"Good-by, Ferragut; do not make me talk any more. You will soon doubt
my reason.... You are doing so already. We shall be friends, just
friends and nothing more. It is useless to think of anything else....
Do not follow me.... We shall see each other.... I shall hunt you
up.... Good-by!... Good-by!"

And although Ferragut felt tempted to follow her, he remained
motionless, seeing her hurry rapidly away, as though fleeing from the
words that she had just let fall before the little temple of the poet.

CHAPTER V

THE AQUARIUM OF NAPLES

In spite of her promise, Freya made no effort to meet the sailor. "We
shall see each other.... I shall hunt you up." But it was Ferragut who
did the hunting, stationing himself around the hotel.

"How crazy I was the other morning!... I wonder what you could have
thought of me!" she said the first time that she spoke to him again.

Not every day did Ulysses have the pleasure of a conversation which
invariably developed from the _Via Partenope_ to Virgil's monument. The
most of the mornings he used to wait in vain opposite the oyster
stands, listening to the musicians who were bombarding the closed
windows of the hotel with their sentimental romances and mandolins.
Freya would not appear.

His impatience usually dragged Ulysses back to the hotel in order to
beg information of the porter. Animated by the hope of a new bill, the
flunkey would go to the telephone and inquire of the servants on the
upper floor. And then with a sad and obsequious smile, as though
lamenting his own words: "The _signora_ is not in. The _signora_ has
passed the night outside of the _albergo_." And Ferragut would go away
furious.

Sometimes he would go to see how the repairs were getting on in his
boat,--an excellent pretext for venting his wrath on somebody. On other
mornings he would go to the garden of the beach of Chiaja,--to the very
same places through which he had strolled with Freya. He was always
looking for her to appear from one moment to another. Everything 'round
about suggested some reminder of her. Trees and benches, pavements and
electric lights knew her perfectly because of having formed a part of
her regular walk.

Becoming convinced that he was waiting in vain, a last hope made him
glance toward the white building of the Aquarium. Freya had frequently
mentioned it. She was accustomed to amuse herself, oftentimes passing
entire hours there, contemplating the life of the inhabitants of the
sea. And Ferragut blinked involuntarily as he passed rapidly from the
garden boiling under the sun into the shadow of the damp galleries with
no other illumination than that of the daylight which penetrated to the
interior of the Aquarium,--a light that, seen through the water and the
glass, took on a mysterious tone, the green and diffused tint of the
subsea depths.

This visit enabled him to kill time more placidly. There came to his
mind old readings confirmed now by direct vision. He was not the kind
of sailor that sails along regardless of what exists under his keel. He
wanted to know the mysteries of the immense blue palace over whose roof
he was usually navigating, devoting himself to the study of
oceanography, the most recent of sciences.

Upon taking his first steps in the Aquarium, he immediately pictured
the marine depths which exploration had divided and charted so
unequally. Near the shores, in the zone called "the littoral" where the
rivers empty, the materials of nourishment were accumulated by the
impulse of the tides and currents, and there flourished sub-aquatic
vegetation. This was the zone of the great fish and reached down to
within two hundred fathoms of the bottom,--a depth to which the sun's
rays never penetrate. Beyond that there was no light; plant life
disappeared and with it the herbivorous animals.

The submarine grade, a gentle one down to this point, now becomes very
steep, descending rapidly to the oceanic abysses,--that immense mass of
water (almost the entire ocean), without light, without waves, without
tides, without currents, without oscillations of temperature, which is
called the "abyssal" zone.

In the littoral, the waters, healthfully agitated, vary in saltiness
according to the proximity of the rivers. The rocks and deeps are
covered with a vegetation which is green near the surface, becoming
darker and darker, even turning to a dark red and brassy yellow as it
gets further from the light. In this oceanic paradise of nutritive and
luminous waters charged with bacteria and microscopic nourishment, life
is developed in exuberance. In spite of the continual traps of the
fishermen, the marine herds keep themselves intact because of their
infinite powers of reproduction.

The fauna of the abyssal depths where the lack of light makes all
vegetation impossible, is largely carnivorous, the weak inhabitants
usually devouring the residuum and dead animals that come down from the
surface. The strong ones, in their turn, nourish themselves on the
concentrated sustenance of the little cannibals.

The bottom of the ocean, a monotonous desert of mud and sand, the
accumulated sediment of hundreds of centuries, has occasional oases of
strange vegetation. These grove-like growths spring up like spots of
light just where the meeting of the surface currents rain down a manna
of diminutive dead bodies. The twisted limestone plants, hard as stone,
are really not plants at all, but animals. Their leaves are simply
inert and treacherous tentacles which contract very suddenly, and their
flowers, avid mouths, which bend over their prey, and suck it in
through their gluttonous openings.

A fantastic light streaks this world of darkness with multicolored
shafts, animal light produced by living organisms. In the lowest
abysses sightless creatures are very scarce, contrary to the common
opinion, which imagines that almost all of them lack eyes because of
their distance from the sun. The filaments of the carnivorous trees are
garlands of lamps; the eyes of the hunting animals, electric globes;
the insignificant bacteria, light-producing little glands all of which
open or close with phosphorescent switches according to the necessity
of the moment,--sometimes in order to persecute and devour, and at
others in order to keep themselves hidden in the shadows.

The animal-plants, motionless as stars, surround their ferocious mouths
with a circle of flashing lights, and immediately their diminutive prey
feel themselves as irresistibly drawn toward them as do the moths that
fly toward the lamp, and the birds of the sea that beat against the
lighthouse.

None of the lights of the earth can compare with those of this abyssal
world. All artificial fires pale before the varieties of its organic
brilliance.

The living branches of polyps, the eyes of the animals, even the mud
sown with brilliant points, emit phosphoric shafts like sparks whose
splendors incessantly vanish and reappear. And these lights pass
through many gradations of colors:--violet, purple, orange, blue, and
especially green. On perceiving a victim nearby, the gigantic
cuttle-fishes become illuminated like livid suns, moving their arms
with death-dealing strokes.

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