The Torrent by Vicente Blasco Ibanez

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"Thanks, Rafael," Leonora answered, quite seriously, as if she had lost
mastery over the irony of former days. "I know you're telling the
truth. And it saddens me, because it really is too bad. You understand,
of course, that I can't love you.... So--if you don't mind--let's talk
of something else."

And hastily, to shift the conversation from such dangerous ground, she
began to chat about her rustic pleasures.

"I have a hen-coop that's too charming for anything. If you could only
see me mornings, in a circle of cackling feathers, throwing fusillades
of corn about to keep the roosters away. You see they get under my
skirts and peck at my feet. It's hard to realize I can be the same woman
who, just a few months ago, was brandishing a stage lance and
interpreting Wagner's dreams, no less, as finely as you please! You'll
soon see _my_ vassals. I have the most astonishing layers you ever saw;
and every morning I rummage around in the straw like a thief to get the
eggs, and when I find them, they are still warm.... I've forgotten the
piano. I hadn't opened it for more than a week, but this afternoon--I
don't know why--I just felt like spending a little while in the society
of the geniuses. I was thirsty for music ... one of those moody whims of
the olden days. Perhaps the presentiment that you were coming: the
thought of those afternoons when you were upstairs, sitting like a booby
in the corner, listening to me.... But don't jump to the conclusion, my
dear deputy, that everything here is mere play--just chickens and the
simple life. No, sir! I have turned my leisure to serious account. I
have done big things to the house. You would never guess! A bathroom, if
you please! And it just scandalizes poor auntie; while Beppa says it's
a sin to give so much thought to matters of the body. I could give up
many of my old habits, but not my bath; it's the one luxury I have kept,
and I sent to Valencia for the plumbers, the marble, and the wood and...
well ... it's a gem. I'll show it to you, by and by. If some fine day I
should suddenly take it into my head to fly away, that bath will remain
here, for my poor aunt to preach about and show how her madcap niece
squandered a mint of money on sinful folly, as she calls it."

And she laughed, with a glance at the innocent dona Pepa, who, there on
the other bench, was for the hundredth time explaining to the Italian
maid the prodigious miracles wrought by the patron of Alcira, and trying
to persuade the "foreigner" to transfer her faith to that saint, and
waste no more time on the second or third raters of Italy.

"Don't imagine," the actress continued, "that I forgot you during all
this time. I am a real friend, you see, and take an interest! I learned
through Cupido, who ferrets out everything, just what you were doing in
Madrid. I, too, figured among your admirers. That proves what friendship
can do! ... I don't know why, but when senor Brull is concerned, I
swallow the biggest whoppers, though I know they're lies. When you made
your speech in the Chambers on that matter of flood protection, I sent
to Alcira for the paper and read the story through I don't know how many
times, believing blindly everything said in praise of you. I once met
Gladstone at a concert given by the Queen at Windsor Castle; I have
known men who got to be presidents of their countries on sheer
eloquence--not to mention the politicians of Spain. The majority of
them I've had, one time or another, as hangers-on in my
dressing-room--once I had sung at the 'Real.' Well, despite all that, I
took the exaggerations your party friends printed about you quite
seriously for some days, putting you on a level with all the solemn
top-notchers I have known. And why, do you suppose? Perhaps from my
isolation and tranquillity here, which do make you lose perspective; or
perhaps it was the influence of environment! It is impossible to live in
this region without being a subject of the Brulls!... Can I be falling
in love with you unawares?"

And once more she laughed the gleeful, candid, mocking laugh of other
days. At first she had received him seriously, simply, under the
influence still of solitude, country life and the longing for rest and
quiet. But once in actual contact with him again, the sight, again, of
that lovesick expression in eyes which now, however, showed a trace of
self-possession, the old teaser had reappeared in her; and her irony cut
into the youth's flesh like a steel blade.

"Stranger things than that have happened," Rafael snapped boldly, and
imitating her sarcastic smile. "It's humanly conceivable that even you
should wind up by falling in love with even me--out of pity, of course!"

"No," answered Leonora bluntly. "It's not even humanly conceivable. I'll
never fall in love with you ... And even if I should," she continued in
a gentle, almost mothering tone, "you would never know about it. I
should keep it jolly well to myself--so as to prevent your going crazy
on finding your affections returned. All afternoon I have been trying
to evade this explanation. I have brought up a thousand subjects, I have
inquired about your life in Madrid--even going into details that haven't
the slightest interest for me--all to keep the talk off love. But with
you, that's impossible; you always come back to that sooner or later.
Very well, so be it ... But I'll never love you--I must not love you. If
I had made your acquaintance somewhere else, but under the same romantic
circumstances, I don't say it mightn't have happened. But here!... My
scruples may make you laugh, but I feel as though I'd be committing a
crime to love you. It would be like entering a home and repaying the
hospitality by purloining the silverware."

"That's a new kind of nonsense you are talking," Rafael exclaimed. "Just
what do you mean? I don't think I understand, exactly."

"Well, you live here, you see, and you hardly realize what it's all
like. Love for love's sake alone! That may happen in the world where I
come from. There folks aren't scandalized at things. Virtue is
broad-minded and tolerant; and people, through a selfish desire to have
their own weaknesses condoned, are careful not to censure others too
harshly. But here!... Here love is the straight and narrow path that
leads to marriage. Now let's see how good a liar you are! Would you be
capable of saying that you would marry me?..."

She gazed straight at the youth out of her green, luminous, mocking
eyes, and with such frankness that Rafael bowed his head, stuttering as
he started to speak.

"Exactly," she went on. "You wouldn't, and you are right. For that
would be a piece of solemn, deliberate barbarity. I'm not one of the
women who are made for such things. Many men have proposed marriage to
me in my time, to prove what fools they were, I suppose. More than once
they've offered me their ducal crowns or the prestige of their
marquisates, with the idea that title and social position would hold me
back when I got bored and tried to fly away. But imagine me married!
Could anything be more absurd?"

She laughed hysterically, almost, but with an undertone that hurt Rafael
deeply. There was a ring of sarcasm, of unspeakable scorn in it, which
reminded the young man of Mephisto's mirth during his infernal serenade
to Marguerite.

"Moreover," continued Leonora, recovering her composure, "you don't seem
to realize just how I stand in this community. Don't imagine what's said
about me in town escapes me ... I just have to notice the way the women
look at me the few times I go in there. And I know also what happened to
you before you left for Madrid. We find out everything here, Rafaelito.
The gossip of these people carries--it reaches even this solitary spot.
I know perfectly well how your mother hates me, and I've even heard
about the squabbles you've had at home over coming here. Well, we must
put a stop to all that! I am going to ask you not to visit me any more.
I will always be your friend; but if we stop seeing each other it will
be to the advantage of us both."

That was a painful thrust for Rafael. So she knew! But to escape from
what he felt to be a ridiculous position, he affected an air of
independence.

"Don't you believe such bosh! It's just election gossip spread by my
enemies. I am of age, and I daresay I can go where I please, without
asking mamma."

"Very well; keep on coming, if you really want to; but all the same, it
shows how people feel toward me--a declaration of war, virtually. And if
I should ever fall in love with you ... heavens! What would they say
then? They'd be sure I had come here for the sole purpose of capturing
their don Rafael! You can see how far such a thing is from my mind. It
would be the end of the peace and quiet I came here to find. If they
talk that way now, when I'm as innocent as a lamb, imagine how their
tongues would wag then!... No, I'm not looking for excitement! Let them
snap at me as much as they please; but I mustn't be to blame. It must be
out of pure envy on their part. I wouldn't stoop to provoking them!"

And with a turn of her head in the direction of the city that was hidden
from view behind the rows of orange-trees, she laughed disdainfully.

Then her gleeful frankness returned once more--a candor of which she was
always ready to make herself the first victim--and in a low,
confidential, affectionate tone she continued:

"Besides, Rafaelito, you haven't had a good look at me. Why, I'm almost
an old woman!... Oh, I know it, I know it. You don't have to tell me.
You and I are of the same age; but you are a man; and I'm a woman. And
the way I've lived has added considerably to my years. You are still on
the very threshold of life. I've been knocking about the world since I
was sixteen, from one theatre to another. And my accursed disposition,
my mania for concealing nothing, for refusing to lie, has helped make me
worse than I really am. I have many enemies in this world who are just
gloating, I am sure, because I have suddenly disappeared. You can't
advance a step on the stage without rousing the jealousy of someone; and
that kind of jealousy is the most bloodthirsty of human passions. Can
you imagine what my kind colleagues say about me? That I've gotten along
as a woman of the _demimonde_ rather than as an artist--that I'm a
_cocotte_, using my voice and the stage for soliciting, as it were."

"Damn the liars!" cried Rafael hotly. "I'd like to have someone say that
in my hearing."

"Bah! Don't be a child. Liars, yes, but what they say has a grain of
truth in it. I have been something of the sort, really; though the blame
had not been wholly mine ... I've done crazy foolish things--giving a
loose rein to my whims, for the fun of the thing. Sometimes it would be
wealth, magnificence, luxury; then again bravery; then again just plain,
ordinary, good looks! And I would be off the moment the excitement, the
novelty, was gone, without a thought for the desperation of my lovers at
finding their dreams shattered. And from all this wild career of
mine--it has taken in a good part of Europe--I have come to one
conclusion: either that what the poets call love is a lie, a pleasant
lie, if you wish; or else that I was not born to love, that I am immune;
for as I go back over my exciting and variegated past, I have to
recognize that in my life love has not amounted to this!"

And she gave a sharp snap with her pink fingers.

"I am telling you everything, you see," she continued. "During your long
absence I thought of you often. Somehow I want you to know me
thoroughly, once and for all. In that way perhaps we can get along
together better. I can understand now why it is a peasant woman will
walk miles and miles, under a scorching sun or a pouring rain, to have a
priest listen to her confession. I am in that mood this afternoon. I
feel as though I must tell everything. Even if I tried not to, I should
not succeed. There's a little demon inside me here urging me, compelling
me, to unveil all my past."

"Please feel quite free to do so. To be a confessor even, to deserve
your confidence, is some progress for me, at any rate."

"Progress? But why should you care to progress ... into my heart! My
heart is only an empty shell! Do you think you'd be getting much if you
got me? I'm absolutely, absolutely worthless! Don't laugh, please! I
mean it! Absolutely worthless. Here in this solitude I have been able to
study myself at leisure, see myself as I really am. I recognize it plain
as day: I am nothing, nothing. Good looking?... Well, yes; I confess I
am not what you'd call ugly. Even if, with a ridiculous false modesty, I
were to say I was, there's my past history to prove that plenty of men
have found me beautiful. But, alas, Rafaelito! That's only the outside,
my facade, so to speak. A few winter rains will wash the paint off and
show the mould that's underneath. Inside, believe me, Rafael, I am a
ruin. The walls are crumbling, the floors are giving way. I have burned
my life out in gaiety. I have singed my wings in a headlong rush into
the candle-flame of life. Do you know what I am? I am one of those old
hulks drawn up on the beach. From a distance their paint seems to have
all the color of their first voyages; but when you get closer you see
that all they ask for is to be let alone to grow old and crumble away on
the sand in peace. And you, who are setting out on your life voyage,
come gaily asking for a berth on a wreck that will go to the bottom as
soon as it strikes deep water, and carry you down with it!... Rafael, my
dear boy, don't be foolish. I am all right to have as a friend; but it's
too late for me to be anything more ... even if I were to love you. We
are of a different breed. I have been studying you, and I see that you
are a sensible, honest, plodding sort of fellow. Whereas I--I belong to
the butterflies, to the opposite of all you are. I am a conscript under
the banner of Bohemia, and I cannot desert the colors. Each of us on his
own road then. You'll easily find a woman to make you happy.... The
sillier she is, the better.... You were born to be a family man."

It occurred to Rafael that she might be poking fun at him, as she so
often did. But no; there was a ring of sincerity in her voice. The
forced smile had vanished from her face. She was speaking tenderly,
affectionately, as if in motherly counsel to a son in danger of going
wrong.

"And don't make yourself over, Rafael. If the world were made up of
people like me, life would be impossible. I too have moments when I
should like to become a different person entirely--a fowl, a cow, or
something, like the folks around me, thinking of money all the time, and
of what I'll eat tomorrow; buying land, haggling with farmers on the
market, studying fertilizers, having children who'd keep me busy with
their colds and the shoes they'd tear, my widest vision limited to
getting a good price for the fall crop. There are times when I envy a
hen. How good it must be, to be a hen! A fence around me to mark the
boundaries of my world, my meals for the trouble of pecking at them, my
life-work to sit hour after hour in the sun, balanced on a roost.... You
laugh? Well, I've made a good start already toward becoming a hen, and
the career suits me to a 't.' Every Wednesday I go to market, to buy a
pullet and some eggs; and I haggle with the vendors just for the fun of
it, finally giving them the price they ask for; I invite the peasant
women to have a cup of chocolate with me, and come home escorted by a
whole crowd of them; and they listen in astonishment when I talk to
Beppa in Italian! If you could only see how fond they are of me!... They
can hardly believe their eyes when they see the _sinorita_ isn't half so
black as the city people paint her. You remember that poor woman we saw
up at the Hermitage that afternoon? Well, she's a frequent visitor, and
I always give her something. She, too, is fond of me.... Now all that is
agreeable, isn't it? Peace; the affection of the humble; an innocent old
woman, my poor aunt, who seems to have grown younger since I came here!
Nevertheless, some fine day, this shell, this rustic bark that has
formed around me in the sun and the air of the orchards, will burst, and
the woman of old--the Valkyrie--will step out of it again. And then, to
horse, to horse! Off on another gallop around the world, in a tempest of
pleasure, acclaimed by a chorus of brutal libertines!... I am sure that
is bound to happen. I swore to remain here until Spring. Well, Spring is
almost here! Look at those rose-bushes! Look at those orange-trees!
Bursting with life! Oh, Rafael, I'm afraid of Springtime. Spring has
always been a season of disaster for me."

And she was lost in thought for a moment. Dona Pepa and the Italian maid
had gone into the house. The good old woman could never keep away from
the kitchen long.

Leonora had dropped her embroidery upon the bench and was looking
upward, her head thrown back, the muscles of her arching neck tense and
drawn. She seemed wrapt in ecstacy, as if visions of the past were
filing by in front of her. Suddenly she shuddered and sat up.

"I'm afraid I'm ill, Rafael. I don't know what's the matter with me
today. Perhaps it's the surprise of seeing you; this talk of ours that
has called me back to the past, after so many months of tranquillity....
Please don't speak! No, not a word, please. You have the rare skill,
though you don't know it, of making me talk, of reminding me of things I
was determined to forget.... Come, give me your arm; let's walk out
through the garden; it will do me good."

They arose, and began to saunter along over the broad avenue that led
from the gate to the little square. The house was soon behind them, lost
in the thick crests of the orange-trees. Leonora smiled mischievously
and lifted a forefinger in warning.

"I took it for granted you had returned from your trip a more serious,
a more well-behaved person. No nonsense, no familiarities, eh? Besides,
you know already that I'm strong, and can fight--if I have to."

II

Rafael spent a sleepless night tossing about in his bed.

Party admirers had honored him with a serenade that had lasted beyond
midnight. The "prominents" among them had shown some pique at having
cooled their heels all afternoon at the Club waiting for the deputy in
vain. He put in an appearance well on towards evening, and after shaking
hands once more all around and responding to speeches of congratulation,
as he had done that morning, he went straight home.

He had not dared raise his head in Dona Bernarda's presence. He was
afraid of those glowering eyes, where he could read, unmistakably, the
detailed story of everything he had done that afternoon. At the same
time he was nursing a resolve to disobey his mother, meet her
domineering, over-bearing aggressiveness with glacial disregard.

The serenade over, he had hurried to his room, to avoid any chance of an
accounting.

Snug in his bed, with the light out, he gave way to an intense, a
rapturous recollection of all that had taken place that afternoon. For
all the fatigue of the journey and the bad night spent in a
sleeping-car, he lay there with his eyes open in the dark, going over
and over again in his feverish mind all that Leonora told him during
that final hour of their walk through the garden. Her whole, her real
life's story it had been, recorded in a disordered, a disconnected
way--as if she must unburden herself of the whole thing all at
once--with gaps and leaps that Rafael now filled in from his own lurid
imagination.

Italy, the Italy of his trip abroad, came back to him now, vivid,
palpitant, vitalized, glorified by Leonora's revelations.

The shadowy majestic Gallery of Victor Emmanuel at Milan! The immense
triumphal arch, a gigantic mouth protended to swallow up the Cathedral!
The double arcade, cross-shaped, its walls covered with columns, set
with a double row of windows under a vast crystal roof. Hardly a trace
of masonry on the lower stories; nothing but plate glass--the windows of
book-shops, music shops, cafes, restaurants, jewelry stores,
haberdasheries, expensive tailoring establishments.

At one end, the Duomo, bristling with a forest of statues and perforated
spires; at the other, the monument to Leonardo da Vinci, and the famous
_Teatro de la Scala_! Within the four arms of the Gallery, a continuous
bustle of people, an incessant going and coming of merging, dissolving
crowds: a quadruple avalanche flowing toward the grand square at the
center of the cross, where the Cafe Biffi, known to actors and singers
the world over, spreads its rows of marble tables! A hubbub of cries,
greetings, conversations, footsteps, echoing in the galleries as in an
immense cloister, the lofty skylight quivering with the hum of busy
human ants, forever, day and night, crawling, darting this way and that,
underneath it!

Such is the world's market of song-birds; the world's Rialto of Music;
the world's recruiting office for its army of voices. From that center,
march forth to glory or to the poorhouse, all those who one fine day
have touched their throats and believed they have some talent for
singing. In Milan, from every corner of the earth, all the unhappy
aspirants of art, casting aside their needles, their tools or their
pens, foregather to eat the macaroni of the _trattoria_, trusting that
the world will some day do them justice by strewing their paths with
millions. Beginners, in the first place, who, to make their start, will
accept contracts in any obscure municipal theatre of the Milan district,
in hopes of a paragraph in a musical weekly to send to the folks at home
as evidence of promise and success; and with them, overwhelming them
with the importance of their past, the veterans of art--the celebrities
of a vanished generation: tenors with gray hair and false teeth; strong,
proud, old men who cough and clear their throats to show they still
preserve their sonorous baritone; retired singers who, with incredible
niggardliness, lend their savings at usury or turn shopkeepers after
dragging silks and velvets over world famous "boards."

Whenever the two dozen "stars," the stars of first magnitude that shine
in the leading operas of the globe, pass through the Gallery, they
attract as much admiring attention as monarchs appearing before their
subjects. The _pariahs_, still waiting for a contract, bow their heads
in veneration; and tell, in bated breath, of the castle on Lake Como
that the great tenor has bought, of the dazzling jewels owned by the
eminent soprano, of the graceful tilt at which the applauded baritone
wears his hat; and in their voices there is a tingle of jealousy, of
bitterness against destiny--the feeling that they are just as worthy of
such splendor--the protest against "bad luck," to which they attribute
failure. Hope forever flutters before these unfortunates, blinding them
with the flash of its golden mail, keeping them in a wretched despondent
inactivity. They wait and they trust, without any clear idea of how they
are to attain glory and wealth, wasting their lives in impotence, to die
ultimately "with their boots on," on some bench of the Gallery.

Then, there is another flock, a flock of girls, victims of the Chimera,
walking with a nimble, a prancing step, with music scores under their
arms, on the way to the _maestro's_; slender, light-haired English
_misses_, who want to become prima donnas of comic opera; fair-skinned,
buxom Russian _parishnas_ who greet their acquaintances with the
sweeping bow of a dramatic soprano; Spanish _senoritas_ of bold faces
and free manners, preparing for stage careers as Bizet's
cigarette-girl--frivolous, sonorous song-birds nesting hundreds of
leagues away, and who have flown hither dazzled by the tinsel of glory.

At the close of the Carnival season, singers who have been abroad for
the winter season appear in the Gallery. They come from London, St.
Petersburg, New York, Melbourne, Buenos Aires, looking for new
contracts. They have trotted about the globe as though the whole world
were home to them. They have spent a week in a train or a month on a
steamer, to get back to their corner in the Gallery. Nothing has
changed, for all of their distant rambles. They take their usual table.
They renew their old intrigues, their old gossip, their old jealousies,
as if they had been gone a day. They stand around in front of the
show-windows with an air of proud disdain, like princes traveling
incognito, but unable quite to conceal their exalted station. They tell
about the ovations accorded them by foreign audiences. They exhibit the
diamonds on their fingers and in their neckties. They hint at affairs
with great ladies who offered to leave home and husband to follow them
to Milan. They exaggerate the salaries they received on their trip, and
frown haughtily when some unfortunate "colleague" solicits a drink at
the nearby Biffi. And when the new contracts come in, the mercenary
nightingales again take wing, indifferently, they care not whither. Once
more, trains and steamers distribute them, with their conceits and their
petulances, all over the globe, to gather them in again some months
later and bring them back to the Gallery, their real home--the spot to
which they are really tied, and on which they are fated to drag out
their old age.

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