The Torrent by Vicente Blasco Ibanez

V >> Vicente Blasco Ibanez >> The Torrent

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21

Rafael tried to stammer an excuse, but that hateful association of the
brutal scene rendered her implacable.

"Go! Go, or I'll beat you again!... And never come back!"

And to emphasize the words, as Rafael, humiliated and covered with dirt,
was leaving the garden, she shut the gate behind him with such a violent
slam that the bars almost went flying.

IV

Dona Bernarda was much pleased with Rafael. The angry glances, the
gestures of impatience, the wordless arguments between mother and son,
which the household had formerly witnessed in such terror, had come to
an end.

The boy had not been visiting the Blue House for some time. She knew
that with absolute certainty, thanks to the gratuitous espionage
conducted for her by persons attached to the Brull family. He scarcely
ever left the house; a few moments at the Club after lunch; and the rest
of the day in the dining-room, with her and family friends; or else,
shut up in his room, with his books, probably, which the austere senora
revered with the superstitious awe of ignorance.

Don Andres, her advisor, commented upon the change with a gloating "I
told you so." What had he always said, when dona Bernarda, in the
confiding intimacies of that friendship which amounted almost to a
senile, a tranquil, a distantly respectful passion, would complain of
Rafael's contrariness? That it would all pass; that it was a young man's
whim; that youth must have its fling! What was the use? Rafael hadn't
studied to be a monk! Many boys his age, and even older ones, were far
worse!... And the old gentleman smiled, for he was thinking of his own
easy conquests with the wretched flock of dirty, unkempt peasant girls
who wrapped the oranges in the shipping houses of Alcira. "You see, dona
Bernarda, you suffered too much with don Ramon. You are a bit too
exacting with Rafael. Let him have a good time! Let him enjoy himself!
He'll get tired of that chorus girl soon enough, pretty as she is. Then
you can take hold and start him right!"

Dona Bernarda once again had reason to appreciate the talent of her
counsellor. His predictions, made with a cynicism that always caused the
pious lady to blush, had been fulfilled to the letter!

She, too, was sure it was all over. Her son was not so blind as his
father had been. He had soon wearied of a "lost woman" like Leonora; he
had decided it was not worth while to quarrel with his mamma over so
trifling a matter, and have his enemies discredit him on that account.
He was returning to the path of duty; and to express her unbounded joy,
the good woman could not pamper him enough.

"And how about ... that?" her friends would ask her, mysteriously.

"Nothing," she would answer, with a proud smile. "Three weeks have gone
by and he hasn't shown the slightest inclination to go back. No, Rafael
is a good boy. All that was just a young one's notion. If you could only
see him keeping me company in the parlor every afternoon! An angel! Good
as pie! He spends hour after hour chatting with me and Matias's
daughter."

And then, broadening her smile and winking cunningly, she would add:

"I think there's something doing in that direction."

And indeed something was "doing"; at least, to judge by appearances.
Bored with wandering from room to room through the house, sick of his
books, with which he would spend hours and hours turning pages without
really seeing a word that was printed on them, Rafael had taken refuge
in the sitting-room where his mother did her sewing, supervising a
complicated piece of embroidery that Remedios was making.

The girl's submissive simplicity appealed to Rafael. Her ingenuousness
gave him a sense of freshness and repose. She was a cosy secluded refuge
where he might sleep after a tempest. His mother's satisfied smile was
there to encourage him in this feeling. Never had he seen her so kind
and so communicative. The pleasure of having him once more safe and
obedient in her hands had mollified that disposition so stern by nature
as to verge on rudeness.

Remedios, with her head bowed low over her embroidery, would blush deep
red whenever Rafael praised her work or told her she was the prettiest
girl in all Alcira. He would help her thread her needles, and hold his
hands out to make a winding frame for the skeins; and more than once,
with the familiarity of an old playmate, he would pinch her
mischievously through the embroidery hoop. And she would never miss the
chance to scream scandal.

"Rafael, don't be crazy," his mother would say, threatening him
indulgently with her withered forefinger. "Let Remedios work; if you
carry on so I won't let you come into the parlor."

And at night, alone in the dining-room with don Andres, when the hour
of confidences came, dona Bernarda would forget the affairs of "the
House" and of "the Party," to say with satisfaction:

"It's going better."

"Is Rafael taking to her?"

"More and more every day. We're getting there, we're getting there! That
boy is the living image of his father when it comes to matters like
this. Believe me, you can't let one of that tribe out of your sight a
minute. If I didn't keep my eye peeled, that young devil would be doing
something that would discredit the House forever."

And the good woman was sure that Doctor Moreno's daughter--that
abominable creature whose good looks had been her nightmare for some
months past--no longer existed for Rafael.

She knew, from her spies, that on one market morning the two had met on
the street in town. Rafael had looked the other way, as if trying to
avoid her; the "_comica_" had turned pale and walked straight ahead
pretending not to see him. What did that mean?... A break for good of
course! The impudent hussy was livid with rage, you see, perhaps because
she could not trap her Rafael again; for he, weary of such
uncleanliness, had abandoned her forever. Ah, the lost soul, the
indecent gad-about! Excuse me! Was a woman to educate a son in the
soundest and most virtuous principles, make a somebody of him, and then
have an adventuress come along, a thousand times worse than a common
street-woman, and carry him off, as nice as you please, in her filthy
hands? What had the daughter of that scamp of a doctor thought?... Let
her fume! "You're sore just because you see he's dumped you for good!"

In the joy of her triumph dona Bernarda was thinking anxiously of her
son's marriage to Remedios, and, coming down one peg on the ladder of
her dignity toward don Matias, she began to treat the exporter as a
member of the family, commenting contentedly upon the growing affection
that united their two children.

"Well, if they're fond of each other," said the rustic magnate, "the
wedding can take place tomorrow so far as I'm concerned. Remedios means
a good deal to me; hard to find a girl like her for running a house; but
that needn't interfere with the marriage. I'm mighty well satisfied,
dona Bernarda, that we should be related through our children. I'm only
sorry that don Ramon isn't here to see it all."

And that was true. The one thing lacking to the millionaire's perfect
joy was that he would never have the chance to treat the tall, imposing
Don Ramon on equal terms for once,--the crowning triumph of a self-made
man.

Dona Bernarda, too, saw in this union the realization of her fondest
dreams: money joined to power; the millions of a business, whose
marvelous successes seemed like deliberate tricks of Chance, coming to
revivify with their sap of gold the Brull family tree, which was showing
the signs of age and long years of struggle!

Spring had come on apace. Some afternoons dona Bernarda would take "the
children" to her own orchards or to the wealthy holdings of don Matias.
It was a sight worth seeing--the kindly shrewdness with which she
chaperoned the young couple, shouting with shocked alarm if they
disappeared behind the orange-trees for a moment or two in their
frolics.

"That Rafael of ours," she would say to don Andres, mimicking the long
face he used to put on when bringing up her troubles with her husband,
"what a rascal he is! I'll bet he's got both arms around her by this
time!"

"Let 'em alone, let 'em alone, dona Bernarda! The deeper in he gets with
this one, the less likely he'll be to go back to the other."

Back to her?... There was no fear of that. It was enough to watch Rafael
picking flowers and weaving them into the girl's hair while she
pretended to fight him off, blushing like a rose, and quite moved at
such homage.

"Now be good, Rafaelito," Remedios would murmur in a sort of entreating
bleat, "don't touch me; don't be so bold."

But her emotion would so betray her that you could see the thing she
most wanted in the world was for Rafael to place upon her body once
again those hands that made her tingle from the tips of her toes to the
roots of her hair. She resisted only because such was the duty of a
well-educated Christian girl. Like a young she-goat she would dash off
with graceful, tripping bounds between the rows of orange-trees, and _su
senoria_, the member from Alcira, would give chase with all his might,
his nostrils quivering and his eyes ablaze.

"Let's see if he can catch you!" the mother would call, with a laugh.
"Run and let him try to catch you!"

Don Andres would roll up his wrinkled face into the smile of an old
faun. Such play made him feel young again.

"Huh, _senora_! I believe you. This is getting on--on, and then some.
I'd say, marry them off pretty quick; for, if you don't, mark my word,
there'll soon be something for Alcira to laugh about."

And they were both mistaken. Neither the mother nor don Andres was
present to note the expression of dejection and despair on Rafael's face
when he was alone, shut up in his room, where, in the dark corners, he
could still see a pair of green, mysterious eyes gleaming at him and
tempting him.

Go back to her? Never! He still felt the shame, the humiliation of that
morning. He could see himself in all his tragic ridiculousness, in a heap
on the ground, trampled under foot by that Amazon, covered with dirt, as
humble and abashed as a criminal caught redhanded and with no excuse.
And then that word, that had cut like the lash of a whip: "Go!" As if he
were a lackey who had dared approach a Duchess! And then that gate
slamming behind him, falling like a slab over a tomb, setting up an
eternal barrier between him and the love of his life!

No, he would never go back! He was not brave enough to face her again.
That morning when he had met her by chance near the market-place, he
thought he would die of shame; his legs sagged under him, and the street
turned black as if night had suddenly fallen. She had disappeared; but
there was a ringing in his ears; and he had had to take hold of
something, as if the earth were swaying under his feet, and he would
fall.

He needed to forget that unutterable disgrace--a recollection as
tenacious as remorse itself. That was why he had plunged into the
affair with his mother's protegee--as a sort of anaesthetic. She was a
woman! And his hands, which seemed to have been unbound since that
painful morning, went out toward her; his tongue, free after his
vehement confession of love at the orchard-gate, spoke glibly now
expressing an adoration that seemed to go beyond the inexpressive
features of Remedios, and reach far, far away, to the Blue House, where
the other woman was, offended and in hiding.

With Remedios he would feel some sign of life, only to relapse into
torpid gloom the moment he was left alone. It was a foamy, frothy
intoxication he felt when with the girl, an effervescence that all
evaporated in solitude. He thought of Remedios as a piece of green
fruit--sound, free of cut or stain, and with all the color of maturity,
but lacking the taste that satisfies and the perfume that enthralls.

In his strange situation, spending days in childish games with a young
girl who aroused in him nothing more than the bland sense of fraternal
comradeship, and nights in sad and sleepless recollection, the one thing
that pleased him was intimacy with his mother. Peace had been restored
to the home. He could come and go without being conscious of a pair of
eyes glaring upon him and without hearing words of indignation stifled
between grating teeth.

Don Andres and his friends at the Club kept asking him when the wedding
would take place. In presence of "the children" dona Bernarda would
speak of alterations that would have to be made in the house. She and
the servants would occupy the ground floor. The whole first story would
be for the couple, with new rooms that would be the talk of the
city--they would get the best decorators in Valencia! Don Matias treated
him familiarly, just as he had in the old days when he came to the
_patio_ to get his orders from don Ramon and found Rafael, as a child,
playing at his father's feet.

"Everything I have will be for you two. Remedios is an angel, and the
day I die, she will get more than my rascal of a son. All I ask of you
is not to take her off to Madrid. Since she is leaving my roof, at least
let me be able to see her every day."

And Rafael would listen to all these things as in a dream. In reality he
had not expressed the slightest desire to marry; but there was his
mother, taking everything for granted, arranging everything, imposing
her will, accelerating his sluggish affection, literally forcing
Remedios into his arms! His wedding was a foregone conclusion, the topic
of conversation for the entire city.

Sunk in this sadness, in the clutch of the tranquillity which now
surrounded him and which he was afraid to break; weak, as a matter of
character, and without will power, he sought consolation in the
reflection that the solution his mother was preparing was perhaps for
the best.

His friendship with Leonora had been broken forever. Any day she might
take flight! She had said so very often. She would be going very
soon--when the blossoms were off the orange-trees! What would be left
for him then ... except to obey his mother? He would marry, and perhaps
that would serve as a distraction. Little by little his affection for
Remedios might grow. Perhaps in time he would even come to love her.

Such meditations brought him a little calm, lulling him into an
attitude of agreeable irresponsibility. He would turn child again, as he
once had been, have his mother take charge of everything; let himself be
drawn along, passive, unresisting, by the current of destiny.

But at times this resignation boiled up into hot, seething ebullitions
of angry protest, of raging passion. At night Rafael could not sleep.
The orange-trees were beginning to bloom. The blossoms, like an odorous
snow, covered the orchards and shed their perfume as far even as the
city streets. The air was heavy with fragrance. To breathe was to scent
a nosegay. Through the window-gratings under the doors, through the
walls, the virginal perfume of the vast orchards filtered--an
intoxicating breath, that Rafael, in his impassioned restlessness,
imagined as wafted from the Blue House, caressing Leonora's lovely
figure, and catching something of the divine fragrance of her redolent
beauty. And he would roll furiously between the sheets, biting the
pillow and moaning.

"Leonora! Leonora!"

One night, toward the end of April, Rafael drew back in front of the
door to his room, with the tremor he would have felt on the threshold of
a place of horror. He could not endure the thought of the night that
awaited him. The whole city seemed to have sunk into languor, in that
atmosphere so heavily charged with perfume. The lash of spring was
stirring all the impulses of life with its exciting caress, and goading
every feeling to new intensity. Not the slightest breeze was blowing.
The orchards saturated the calm atmosphere with their odorous
respiration. The lungs expanded as if there were no air, and all space
were being inhaled in each single breath. A voluptuous shudder was
stirring the countryside as it lay dozing under the light of the moon.

Hardly realizing what he was doing, Rafael went down into the street.
Soon he found himself upon the bridge, where a few strollers, hat in
hand, were breathing the night air eagerly, looking at the clusters of
broken light that the moon was scattering over the river like fragments
of a mirror.

He went on through the silent, deserted streets of the suburbs, his
footsteps echoing from the sidewalks. One row of houses lay white and
gleaming under the moon. The other was plunged in shadow. He was drawn
on and on into the mysterious silence of the fields.

His mother was asleep, he suddenly reflected. She would know nothing. He
would be free till dawn. He yielded further to the attraction of the
roads that wound in and out through the orchards, where so many times he
had dreamed and hoped.

The spectacle was not new to Rafael. Every year he had watched that
fertile plain come to life at the touch of Springtime, cover itself with
flowers, fill the air with perfumes; and yet, that night, as he beheld
the vast mantle of orange-blossoms that had settled over the fields, and
was gleaming in the moonlight like a fall of snow, he felt himself
completely in control of an infinitely sweet emotion.

The orange-trees, covered from trunk to crown with white, ivory-smooth
flowerets, seemed like webs of spun glass, the vegetation of one of
those fantastic snow-mantled landscapes that quiver sometimes in the
glass spheres of paper-weights. The perfume came in continuous,
successive waves, rolling out upon the infinite with a mysterious
palpitation, transfiguring the country, imparting to it a feeling of
supernaturalness--the vision of a better world, of a distant planet
where men feed on perfume and live in eternal poetry. Everything was
changed in this spacious love-nest softly lighted by a great lantern of
mother-of-pearl. The sharp crackling of the branches sounded in the deep
silence like so many kisses; the murmur of the river became the distant
echo of passionate love-making, hushed voices whispering close to the
loved one's ears words tremulous with adoration. From the canebrake a
nightingale was singing softly, as if the beauty of the night had
subdued its plaintive song.

How good it was to be alive! The blood tingled more rapidly, more hotly,
through the body! Every sense seemed sharper, more acute; though that
landscape imposed silence with its pale wan beauty, just as certain
emotions of intense joy are tasted with a sense of mystic shrinking!

Rafael followed the usual path. He had turned instinctively toward the
Blue House.

The shame of his disgrace still smarted raw within him. Had he met
Leonora now in the middle of the road he would have recoiled in childish
terror; but he would not meet her at such an hour. That reflection gave
him strength to walk on. Behind him, over the roofs of the city, the
tolling of a clock rolled. Midnight! He would go as far as the wall of
her orchard, enter if that were possible, stand there a few moments in
silent humility before the house, looking up adoringly at the windows
behind which Leonora lay sleeping.

It would be his farewell! The whim had occurred to him as he left the
city and saw the first orange-trees laden with the blossoms whose
perfume had for many months been holding the songstress there in patient
expectation. Leonora would never know he had been near her in the silent
orchard bathed in moonlight, taking leave of her with the unspoken
anguish of an eternal farewell, as to a dream vanishing on the horizon
of life!

The gate with the green wooden bars came into view among the trees--the
gate that had been slammed behind him in insulting dismissal. Among the
thorns of the hedge he looked for an opening he had discovered in the
days when he used to hover about the house. He went through, and his
feet sank into the fine, sandy soil of the orange-groves. Above the tops
of the trees, the house itself could be seen, white in the moonlight.
The rain-troughs of the roof and the balustrades of the balconies shone
like silver. The windows were all closed. Everything was asleep.

He was about to step forward, when a dark form shot out from between two
orange-trees and stopped near him with a muffled growl. It was the house
dog, an ugly, ill-tempered animal trained to bite before it barked.

Rafael recoiled instinctively from the warm breath of that panting,
furious muzzle which was reaching for his leg; but the dog, after a
second's hesitation, began to wag its tail with pleasure; and was
content merely to sniff at the boy's trousers so as to make absolutely
sure of an old friend's identity. Rafael patted him on the head, as he
had done so many times, distractedly, in conversations with Leonora on
the bench in the _plazoleta_. A good omen this encounter seemed! And he
walked on, while the dog resumed his watch in the darkness.

Timidly he made his way forward in the shelter of a large patch of
shadow cast by the orange-trees, dragging himself along, almost, like a
thief afraid of an ambuscade.

He reached the walk leading to the _plazoleta_ and was surprised to find
the gate half open. Suddenly he heard a suppressed cry near by.

He turned around, and there on the tile bench, wrapped in the shadow of
the palm-trees and the rose-bushes, he saw a white form--a woman. As she
rose from her seat the moonlight fell squarely on her features.

"Leonora!"

The youth would have gladly sunk into the earth. "Rafael! You here?..."

And the two stood there in silence, face to face. He kept his eyes fixed
on the ground, ashamed. She looked at him with a certain indecision.

"You've given me a scare that I'll never forgive you for," she said at
last. "What are you doing here?..."

Rafael was at a loss for a reply. He stammered with an embarrassment
that quite impressed Leonora; but despite his agitation, he noticed a
strange glitter in the girl's eyes, and a mysterious veiling of her
voice that seemed to transfigure her.

"Come, now," said Leonora gently, "don't hunt up any far-fetched
excuses.... You were coming to bid me good-bye--and without trying to
see me! What a lot of nonsense! Why don't you say right out that you
are a victim of this dangerous night--as I am, too?"

And her eyes, glittering with a tearful gleam, swept the _plazoleta_,
which lay white in the moonlight; and the snowy orange-blossoms, the
rose-bushes, the palm-trees, that stood out black against the blue sky
where the stars were twinkling like grains of luminous sand. Her voice
trembled with a soft huskiness, as caressing as velvet.

Rafael, quite encouraged by this unexpected reception, tried to beg
forgiveness for the madness that had caused his expulsion from the
place; but the actress cut him short.

"Let's not discuss that unpleasant thing! It hurts me just to think of
it. You're forgiven; and since you've fallen on this spot as though
heaven had dropped you here, you may stay a moment. But ... no
liberties. You know me now."

And straightening up to her full height as an Amazon sure of herself,
she turned to the bench, motioning to Rafael to take a seat at the other
end.

"What a night!... I feel a strange intoxication without wine! The
orange-trees seem to inebriate me with their very breath. An hour ago my
room was whirling round and round, as though I were going to faint. My
bed was like a frail bark tossing in a tempest. So I came down as I
often do; and here you can have me until sleep proves more powerful than
the beauty of this beautiful night."

She spoke with a languid abandonment; her voice quivering, and tremors
rippling across her shoulders, as if all the perfume were hurting her,
oppressing her powerful vitality. Rafael sat looking at her over the
length of the bench--a white, sepulchral figure, wrapped in the hooded
cape of a dressing-gown--the first thing she had laid hands upon when
she had thought of going out into the garden.

"I was frightened when I saw you," she continued, in a slow, faint
voice. "A little fright, nothing more! A natural surprise, I suppose;
and yet, I was thinking of you that very moment. I confess it. I was
saying to myself: 'What can that crazy boy be doing, at this hour, I
wonder?' And suddenly you appeared, like a ghost. You couldn't sleep;
you were excited by all this fragrance; and you have come to try your
luck anew, with the hope that brought you here at other times."

She spoke without her usual irony, softly, simply, as if she were
talking to herself. Her body was thrown limply back against the bench,
one arm resting behind her head.

Rafael started to speak once more of his repentance, of his desire to
kneel in front of the house there in mute entreaty for pardon, while she
would be sleeping in the room above. But Leonora interrupted him again.

"Hush! Your voice is very loud. They might hear you. My aunt's room is
in the other wing of the house, but she's not a heavy sleeper....
Besides, I don't care to listen to talk about remorse, pardon, and such
things. It makes me think of that morning. The mere fact that I am
letting you stay here ought to be enough, oughtn't it? I want to forget
all that.... Hush, Rafael! Silence makes the beauty of the night more
wonderful. The fields seem to be talking with the moon, and these waves
of perfume that are sweeping over us are echoes of their passionate
words."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21