The Torrent by Vicente Blasco Ibanez

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"A jewel for the home! And didn't I tell you so?" her father would
whisper, satisfied with his daughter's obtrusive qualities.

Rafael, for his part, found them intolerable. He had tried to love his
bride in the early months of their marriage. He made an honest effort to
forget, and recall the playful, passionate impulses he had felt on those
days when he had chased her around the orchards. But after a first fever
of passion had passed, she had proved to be a cold, calculating
child-bearer, hostile to expansiveness of love out of religious
scruples, viewing it her duty to bring new offsprings into the world to
perpetuate the House of Brull and to fill "grandaddy" don Matias with
pride at sight of a nursery full of future "personages" destined to the
heights of political greatness in the District and in the nation.

Rafael had one of those gentle, temperate, honest, households that, on
the afternoon of their walk through Valencia, don Andres had pointed out
to him as a radiant hope, if only he would turn his back on his mad
adventure. He had a wife; and he had children; and he was rich. His
father-in-law ordered shotguns for him from his correspondents in
England. Every year a new horse was added to the stable, and don Matias
would see to purchasing the best that could be found in the fairs of
Andalusia. He hunted, took long horseback rides over the roads of the
district, dispensed justice in the _patio_ of the house, just as his
father don Ramon had done. His three little ones, finding him somewhat
strange after his long absences in Madrid and more at home with their
grand-parents than with him, would group themselves with bowed, bashful
heads around his knees, silently waiting for his paternal kiss.
Everything attainable around him was within his reach for the asking;
and yet--he was not happy.

From time to time the adventure of his youth would come back to his
mind. The eight years that had passed seemed to have put a century
between him and those ancient days. Leonora's face had slowly, slowly,
faded in his memory, till all he could remember were her two green eyes,
and her blond hair that crowned her with a crown of gold. Her aunt, the
devout, ingenuous dona Pepa, had died some time since--leaving her
property for the salvation of her soul. The orchard and the Blue House
belonged now to Rafael's father-in-law, who had transferred to his own
home the best of its equipment--all the furniture and decorations that
Leonora had bought during her period of exile, while Rafael had been in
Madrid and she had thought of living the rest of her life in Alcira.

Rafael carefully avoided revisiting the Blue House, out of regard for
his wife's possible susceptibilities. As it was, the woman's silence
sometimes weighed heavily upon him, a strange circumspection, which
never permitted the slightest allusion to the past. In the coldness and
the uncompromising scorn with which she abominated any poetic madness in
love, an important part was doubtless played by the suppressed memory of
her husband's adventure with the actress, which everybody had tried to
conceal from her and which had deeply disturbed the preparations for her
wedding.

When the deputy was alone in Madrid, as much at liberty as before his
marriage, he could think of Leonora freely, without those restraints
which seemed to disturb him back at home in the bosom of his family.
What could have become of her? To what limits of mad frolic had she gone
after that parting which even after years had passed, still brought a
blush of shame to Rafael's cheeks? The Spanish papers paid very little
attention to matters of foreign art. Only twice in their columns did he
discover Leonora's stage name with an account of her new triumphs. She
had sung in Paris in French, with as much success as a native _artiste_.
The purity of her accent had surprised everyone. In Rome she had played
the "lead" in an opera by a young Italian composer, and her coming had
been announced by press agents as a great event. The opera had failed to
please; not so the singer. Her audience had been moved to tears by her
execution of a scene in the last act, where she wept for a lost love.

After that--silence, no news whatever! She had disappeared. A new love
affair, Rafael supposed, a new outburst of that vehement passion which
made her follow her chosen man like a slave. And Rafael felt a flash of
jealousy at the thought, as if he had rights over the woman still, as if
he had forgotten the cruelty with which he had bidden her farewell.

That, fundamentally, had been the cause of all the bitterness and
remorse in his life. He understood now that Leonora had been his one
genuine passion: the love that comes to people once in a lifetime. It
had been within reach of his hand, and he had failed to grasp it, had
frightened it away forever with a cowardly act of villany, a cruel
farewell, the shame of which would go to the grave with him. Garlanded
in the orange-blossoms of the orchard, Love had passed before him,
singing the Hymn of wild Youth that knows neither scruples nor ambition.
Love, true love had invited him to follow--and he had answered with a
stab--in the back! That love would never return, as he well knew. That
mysterious being with its smiles and with its frolics, goes forever when
once it goes. It knows no bartering with destiny. It demands blind
obedience and bids the lover take the woman who offers her hand,
orchard-maid or prima donna as she may be. The man who hesitates is
lost.

And Rafael felt that an endless night had closed around him! He found
all his efforts to escape from his dullness and depression vain. He
could not shake off the senility that was creeping over his spirit.
Sadly he bowed to the conviction that another love like the first was
impossible.

For two months he had been the lover of Cora, a popular girl of the
private rooms of the Fornos, a tall, thin, strong Galician beauty--as
strong, alas, as the other. Cora had spent a few months in Paris, and
had returned thence with her hair bleached and a distinctly French
manner of lifting her skirt as if she were strolling along the
_trottoir_ of the _boulevards_. She had a sweet way of mixing French
words in her conversation, calling everybody _mon cher_ and pretending
expertness in the organization of a supper. At all events she shone like
a great _cocotte_ among her competitors, though her real asset was a
line of _risque_ stories, and a certain gift for low songs.

Rafael soon wearied of this affair. He did not like her manufactured
beauty, nor her tiresome chatter that always turned on fashions. She was
always wanting money for herself and for her friends. Rafael, as a
wealthy miser, grew alarmed. Remorsefully he thought of his children's
future, as if he were ruining them; and of what his economical Remedios
would say of his considerably augmented expenditures. Well he knew that
Remedios haggled for everything down to the last _centimo_, and that her
one extravagance was an occasional new shawl for the local Virgin, and
an annual _fiesta_ for the Saint with a large orchestra and hundreds of
candles! He broke off relations with the Galician _boulevardiere_, and
found the rupture a sweet relief. It seemed to remove a sully from the
memory of his youthful passion. Moreover, his Party had just returned to
power and it was important to have no blemish on his standing as a
"serious" person! He resumed his seat on the Right, and near the Blue
Bench this time, as one of the senior deputies. The moment for work had
come! Now, it was time to see whether he could not make a position for
himself with one good boost!

They named him to the Committee on the Budget, and he took it upon
himself to refute certain strictures presented by the Opposition to the
Government program on Pardon and Justice. One friend he could count on
was the minister: a respectable, solemn marquis who had once been an
Absolutist, and who, wearied of platonisms, as he put it, had finally
"recognized" the liberal regime, without amending his former ideas,
however.

Rafael was as nervous as a schoolboy on the eve of his first
examinations. At the library he studied everything that had been said on
the subject by countless deputies in a century of Parliamentary
government. His friends in the Conference Chamber--the legislative
bohemia of "ex-honorables" and unsuccessful aspirants, who were loyal to
him in gratitude for passes to the floor--were encouraging him and
prophesying victory. They no longer approached him to begin: "When I was
auditor ..." to indulge in a veritable intoxication on the fumes of
their past glory; no longer did they ask him what don Francisco thought
of this, that, or the other thing, to draw their own wild inferences
from his replies and start rumors going based on "inside information."
Now, quite frankly, they "advised" him, giving him hints in accordance
with what they had said or meant to say during that discussion of the
budget back in Gonzalez Brabo's time, to end by murmuring, with a smile
that gave him the shudders: "Well, anyhow, we'll see! Good luck to you!"

And that flock of disgruntled spirits who sat around waiting for an
election that would never come and ran like old war-horses at the scent
of gun-powder to group themselves, as soon as a row started and the bell
began to ring for order, in two factions on either side of the
president's chair, could never have imagined that the young deputy, on
many a night, broke off his study with a temptation to throw the thick
tomes of records against the wall, yielding finally, with thrills of
intense voluptuousness, to the thought of what might have become of him
had he gone out into life on his own in the trail of a pair of green
eyes whose golden lights he thought he could still see glittering in
front of him between the lines of clumsy parliamentary prose, tempting
him as they had tempted him of yore!

II

"Order of the day. Resumption of debate on ecclesiastical
appropriations!"

The Chamber suddenly came to life with a wild movement of dispersion,
something comparable to the stampede of a herd or the panic of an army.
The deputies of quickest motory reactions were on their feet in an
instant, followed by dozens and dozens of others, all making for the
doors. Whole blocks of seats were emptied.

The Chamber had been packed from the opening of the Session. It was a
day of intense excitement: a debate between the leader of the Right and
a former comrade who was now in the Opposition. The jealousy between the
two old cronies was resulting in a small-sized scandal. Mutual secrets
of their ancient intimacy as colleagues were coming to light--many of
the intrigues that had settled historic parliamentary contests for the
premiership. The galleries were filled with spectators who had come to
enjoy the fun. The deputies and ministers occupied every seat on either
hand of the presidential chair. But now the incident was closed. Two
hours of veiled insult and pungent gossip had passed all too soon. And
the phrase "Ecclesiastical Appropriations" had served as a fire-alarm.
Run--do not walk--to the nearest exit!

However, the name of the orator who was now being given the floor
served to check the stampede somewhat, much as routs have been stopped
by some great historic warcry. A few deputies hurried back to their
benches. All eyes turned toward the extreme Left of the Chamber, where,
a white head, rising above the red seats over a pair of spectacles and a
gently ironical smile, was coming into view.

The old man was on his feet, at last. He was small, so frail of person,
that he hardly overtopped the men still seated. All his vital energies
had been concentrated in that huge, nobly proportioned head of his, pink
at the top, with shocks of white hair combed back over it. His pale
countenance had the warlike transparency of a sound, vigorous old age.
To it a shining, luminous silvery beard added a majesty like that with
which Sacred Art used to picture the Almighty.

The venerable orator folded his arms and waited for the noise in the
Chamber to cease. When the last determined fugitives had disappeared
through the exit doors, he began to speak. The journalists in the
press-gallery craned their necks toward "the tribune," hushing for
silence in order not to lose a word.

This man was the patriarch of the Chamber. He represented "the
Revolution"--not only the old-fashioned, the political, revolution, but
the modern, the social and economic revolution. He was the enemy of all
present systems of government and society. His theories irritated
everybody, like a new and incomprehensible music falling on slumbering
ears. But he was listened to with respect, with the veneration inspired
by his years and his unsullied career. His voice had the melodious
feebleness of a muffled, silver bell; and his words rolled through the
silence of the hall with a certain prophetic stateliness, as if the
vision of a better world were passing before his eyes as he spoke, the
revelation of a perfect society of the future, where there would be no
oppression and no misery, the dream he had so often dreamed in the
solitude of his study.

Rafael was sitting at the head of the committee bench, somewhat apart
from his companions. They were giving him ample room, as bull-fighters
do their _matador_. He had bundles of documents and volumes piled up at
his seat, in case he should need to quote authorities in his reply to
the venerable orator.

He was studying the old man admiringly and in silence. What a strong,
sturdy spirit, as hard and cold and clear as ice! That veteran had
doubtless had his passions like other men. At moments, through his calm
impassive exterior, a romantic vehemence would seem to burn, a poetic
ardor, that politics had smothered, but which smouldered on as volcanic
fires lie dormant rumbling from time to time under the mantle of snow on
a mountain peak. But he had known how to adjust his life to duty; and
without belief in God, with the support of philosophy only, his virtue
had been strong enough to disarm his most violent enemies.

And a weakling, a dawdler like himself, must reply to a hero like
that!... Rafael began to be afraid; and to recover his spirits he swept
the hall with his eyes. What the regular hangers-on of the sessions
would have called a medium-sized house! A few deputies scattered about
the benches! But the public galleries were filled with spectators,
workingmen mostly, absolutely quiet, and all ears, as if they were
drinking in every word of the old republican! In the reserved seats,
just previously packed with curiosity-seekers interested in the set-to
scheduled for the opening of the session, only a few foreign tourists
were left. They were taking in everything--even the fantastic uniforms
of the mace-bearers; and they were determined not to leave until they
were put out. A few women of the so-called "parliament set," who came
every afternoon when there was a squabble on the program, were munching
caramels and staring in wonderment at the old man. There he was, the
arch enemy of law and order! The man whose name it was bad form to
mention at their afternoon teas! Who would have supposed he had such a
kindly, harmless face? How easily, with what naturalness and grace, he
wore his frock coat! Incredible!... In the diplomatic gallery a solitary
lady! She was extravagantly attired in a huge picture hat with black
plumes. Almost hidden behind her was a fair haired youth, his hair
parted in the middle, his dress the height of correctness and foppery.
Some rich tourist-woman probably! She was directly opposite Rafael's
bench. He could see that her gloved hand rested on the railing, as she
moved her fan to and fro with an almost discourteous noise. The rest of
her body was lost in the darkness of the gallery. She bent back from
time to time to whisper and laugh with her escort.

Somewhat reassured by the empty appearance of the house, Rafael scarcely
paid any further attention to the orator. He had guessed all that the
man would say, and he was satisfied. The outline of the long answer he
had prepared would not in the least be affected.

The old man was inflexible and unchangeable. For thirty years he had
been saying the same thing over and over again. Rafael had read that
speech any number of times. The man had made a close study of national
evils and abuses, and had formulated a complete and pitiless criticism
of them in which the absurdities stood out by force of contrast. With
the conviction that truth is forever the same and that there is nothing
ever so novel as the truth, he had kept repeating his criticism year
after year in a pure, concise, sonorous style that seemed to scatter the
ripe perfume of the classics about the muggy Chamber.

He spoke in the name of the future Spain, of a Spain that would have no
kings, because it would be governed by itself; that would pay no
priests, because, respecting freedom of conscience, it would recognize
all cults and give privileges to none. And with a simple, unaffected
urbanity, as if he were constructing rhyming verses, he would pair
statistics off, underscoring the absurd manner in which the nation was
taking leave of a century of revolution during which all peoples had
done things while Spain was lying stagnant.

More money, he pointed out, was spent on the maintenance of the Royal
House than upon public education. Conclusion: the support of a single
family in idleness was worth more than the awakening of an entire people
to modern life! In Madrid, in the very capital, within sight of every
one of his hearers, the schools remained in filthy hovels, while
churches and convents rose overnight on the principal streets like
magic palaces. During twenty-odd years of Restoration, more than fifty
completely new, religious edifices, girding the capital with a belt of
glittering structures, had been built. On the other hand, only a single
modern school, at all comparable to the ordinary public schools of any
town in England or Switzerland! The young men of the nation were feeble,
unenthusiastic, selfish and--pious--in contrast with fathers, who had
adored the generous ideals of liberty and democracy and had stood for
action, revolt! The son was an old man at majority, his breast laden
with medals, with no other intellectual stimulus than the debates of his
religious fraternity, trusting his future and his thinking to the Jesuit
introduced into the family by the mother, while the father smiled
bitterly, realizing that he was a back-number, belonging to a different
world, to a dying generation--though to a generation which had
galvanized the nation for a moment with the spirit of revolutionary
protest!

Here was the Church collecting pay for its services from the faithful,
and then over again from the State! Here was the Ministry of the
Interior appealing for a reduction in taxes--a program of strict
economy--while new bishoprics were being created and ecclesiastical
appropriations swelled for the benefit of the upper clergy; and with no
advantage at all, meanwhile, to the proletariat of the soutane, to the
poor curates who, to make a bare living, had to practice the most
impious worldliness and unscrupulously exploit the house of God! And
while this was going on public works could wait, towns could go without
roads, Districts without railroads, though the wildest savages of Asia
and Africa had both! Fields could continue to perish of drought while
nearby rivers continued to pour their unutilized waters into the sea!

A thrill of conviction rippled through the Chamber. The silence was
absolute. Everybody was holding his breath so as not to lose a syllable
from that faint voice, which sounded like a cry from a distant tomb. It
was as though Truth in person were passing through those murky
precincts; and when the orator ended with an invocation to the future,
in which social absurdities and injustice should no longer exist, the
silence became deeper still, as if a glacial blast of death were blowing
upon those brains that had thought themselves deliberating in the best
of all possible worlds.

It was now time for the reply. Rafael arose, pale, pulling at his cuffs,
waiting a few minutes for the excitement in the Chamber to subside. The
audience had relaxed and was whispering and stirring about, after the
sustained attention compelled by the concise style and the barely
audible voice of the old man.

If Rafael was depending on the sympathy of an audience to encourage him,
things looked promising indeed! The hall began to empty. Why not? Who is
interested in a committee's reply to the Opposition? Besides, Brull had
a bundle of documents on hand. A long-winded affair! Let's escape!
Deputies filed by in line across the semi-circle in front of him; while
above, in the galleries, the desertion was general. The caramel-chewers,
noting that the display of celebrities was over for the day, rose from
their places. Their coaches were ready outside for a ride through the
Castellana. That strange woman in the diplomatic gallery had also risen
to go. But no: she was giving her hand to her companion, bidding him
good-bye. Now she had resumed her seat, continuing the busy movement of
her fan that annoyed Rafael so. Thanks for the compliment, my fair one I
Though as far as he was concerned, the whole audience might have gone,
leaving only the president and the mace-bearers. Then he could speak
without any fear at all! The public galleries, especially, unnerved him.
Nobody had moved there. Those workingmen were without doubt waiting for
the rebuttal of his answer from their venerable spokesman. Rafael felt
that the swarthy heads above all those dirty blouses and shirt-fronts
without collars or neckties were eyeing him with stony coldness. "Now
we'll see what this ninny has got to say!"

Rafael began with a eulogy on the immaculate character, the political
importance and the profound learning of that venerable septuagenarian
who still had strength to battle consistently and nobly for the lost
cause of his youth. An exordium of this nature was the regular
procedure. That was how "the Chief" did things. And as he spoke,
Rafael's eyes turned anxiously upon the clock. He wanted to be long,
very long. If he did not talk for an hour and a half or two hours he
would feel disgraced. Two hours was the least to be expected from a man
of his promise. He had seen party chiefs and faction leaders go it for a
whole afternoon, from four to eight, hoarse and puffing, sweating like
diggers in a sewer, with their collars wilted to rags, watching the
great hall-clock with the intentness of a man waiting to be hanged.
"Still an hour left before closing time!" a speaker's friends would say.
And the great orator, like a wearied horse, but a thoroughbred, would
find new energy somewhere and start on another lap, round and round,
repeating what he had already said a dozen times, summarizing the two
ideas he had managed to produce in four hours of sonorous chatter. With
duration as the test of quality, no one on the government had yet
succeeded in equaling a certain redheaded deputy of the Opposition who
was forever heckling the Premier, and could talk, if need be, three days
in succession for four hours a day.

Rafael had heard people praise the conciseness and the clarity of
new-fangled oratory in the parliaments of Europe. The speeches of party
leaders in Paris or in London took up never more than half a column in a
newspaper. Even the old man he was answering had adopted, to be original
in everything, that selfsame conciseness: every sentence of his
contained two or three ideas. But the member from Alcira would not be
led astray by such niggardly parsimony. He believed that ponderousness
and extension were qualities indispensable to eloquence. He must fill a
whole issue of the Congressional Record, to impress his friends back
home in the District. So he talked and talked on, trying deliberately to
avoid ideas. Those he had he would keep in reserve as long as possible,
certain that the longer he held them prisoner the longer and more solemn
would his oration be.

He had gained a quarter of an hour without making any reply to the
previous speech whatever, and literally burying his illustrious
antagonist in flowers. _Su senoria_ was noteworthy firstly, because,
secondly, because, fourteenthly, because ... Nay more, he had
accomplished this, performed that, endeavored the other
thing--"But"--and with this _but_, alas, Rafael must begin to loosen up
on a little of what he had prepared in advance. _Su senoria_ was an
"ideologue" of immense talent, but ever removed from reality; he would
govern peoples in accordance with theories dug out of books, without
paying any attention to practical considerations, to the individual and
indestructible character possessed by every nation!...

And it was worth sitting an afternoon even in that Chamber to hear the
slighting tone of scorn with which the member from Alcira emphasized
that word _ideologue_ and that phrase about "theories dug out of books"
and "living removed from reality!"

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