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The Torrent by Vicente Blasco Ibanez

V >> Vicente Blasco Ibanez >> The Torrent




A brazen charlatan he was, every moment talking of "Article Number
So-and-So" of the law that applied to the case. The poor orchard workers
came to have as much awe for his learning as fear of his malice, and in
all their controversies they sought his advice and paid for it, as if he
were a lawyer.

When he had gotten a small fortune together, he continued holding his
menial posts in the city administration to retain the superstitious
respect which is inspired in peasant-folk by all who are on good terms
with the law; but not content with playing the eternal beggar, dependent
on the humble gratuities of the poor, he took to pulling them out of
their financial difficulties, lending them money on the collateral of
their future harvests.

But six per cent seemed too petty a profit for him. The real plight of
these folk came when a horse died and they had to buy another. Don Jaime
became a dealer in dray horses, buying more or less defective animals
from gypsies in Valencia, praising their virtues to the skies, and
reselling them as thoroughbreds. And no sale on the instalment plan!
Cash down! The horses did not belong to him--as he vowed with his hand
pressed solemnly to his bosom--and their owners wished to realize on
their value at once. The best he could do in the circumstances prompted
by his greatness of heart, which always overflowed at the sight of
poverty was to borrow money for the purchase from a friend of his.

The peasant in his desperate need would fall into the snare, and carry
off the horse after signing all kinds of notes and mortgages to cover
the loan of money he had not seen! For the don Jaime who spoke for the
unknown party in the deal transferred the cash to the same don Jaime who
spoke for the owner of the horse. Result: the rustic bought an animal,
without chaffering, at double its value, having in addition borrowed a
lot of money at cut-throat interest. In every turn-over of this sort don
Jaime doubled his principal. New straits inevitably developed for the
dupe; the interest kept piling up; hence new concessions, still more
ruinous than the first, that don Jaime might be placated and give the
purchaser a month's reprieve.

Every Wednesday, which was market-day in Alcira and brought a great
crowd of orchard-folk to town, the street where don Jaime lived was the
busiest in the city. People came in droves to ask for renewal of their
notes, each leaving a tip of several _pesetas_ usually, not to be
counted against the debt itself. Others, humbly, timidly, as if they had
come to rob the grasping Shylock, would ask for loans; and the strange
thing about it, as the malicious noted, was that all these people, after
leaving everything they owned in don Jaime's hands, went off content,
their faces beaming with satisfaction, as if they had just been rescued
from a danger.

This was don Jaime's chief skill. He had the trick of making usury look
like kindness; he always spoke of _those fellows_, those hidden owners
of the money and the horses--heartless wretches who were "after him,"
holding him responsible for the short-comings of all their debtors. The
burdens he thus supposedly assumed won him a reputation as a
kind-hearted soul, and such confidence was the wily old demon able to
instill in his victims that when mortgages were foreclosed on homes or
fields, many of the unfortunates despoiled, would say, resignedly:

"It's not his fault. What could the poor man do if they forced him to
it? It's those _other fellows_ who are sucking the blood of us poor
folks."

And so, quietly, leisurely, tranquilly, don Jaime got possession of a
field here, then another there, then a third between the two; and in a
few years he had rounded out a beautiful orchard of orange-trees with
virtually no expenditure of capital at all. Thus his property went on
increasing, and, with his radiant smile, his spectacles on his forehead
and his paunch growing fatter and fatter, he could be seen surrounded by
new victims, addressing them with the affectionate _tu_, patting them on
the back, and vowing that this weakness he had for the doing of favors
would some day bring him to dying like a dog in the gutter.

Thus he went on prospering. Nor was all the scoffing of city people of
any avail in shaking the confidence reposed in him by that flock of
rustics, who feared him as they feared the Law itself and believed in
him as they believed in God.

A loan to a spendthrift eldest son made him the proprietor of the fine
city mansion, which came to be known as "the Brull place." From that
date he began to hob-nob with the large real-estate owners of the city,
who, though they despised this upstart, made a small place for him in
their midst with the instinctive solidarity that characterizes the
freemasonry of money. To gain a little more standing for his name, he
became a votary of San Bernardo, contributed to the funds for church
festivals, and danced attendance on the _alcalde_, whoever that "mayor"
might be. In his eyes now, the only people in Alcira were such as
collected thousands of _duros_, whenever harvest time came around. The
rest were rabble, rabble, sir!

Then, at last he resigned the petty offices he had been filling; and
handing his usury business over to those who formerly had served him as
go-betweens, he set himself to the task of marrying off his son and sole
heir, Ramon, an idling ne'er-do-well, who was always getting into
trouble and upsetting the tranquil comfort that surrounded old Brull as
he rested from his plunderings.

The father felt the satisfaction of a bully in having such a tall,
strong, daring and insolent son, a boy who compelled respect in cafes
and clubs more with his fists than with the special privileges conferred
in small towns by wealth. Let anyone dare make fun of the old usurer
when he had such a fire-eater to protect him!

Ramon had wanted to join the Army; but every time he referred to what he
called his vocation, his father would fly into a rage. "Do you think
that is what I've worked for all these years?" He could remember the
time when, as a poor clerk, he had been forced to fawn on his superiors
and listen humbly, cringingly, to their reprimands. He did not want a
boy of his to be shoved about hither and thither like a mere machine.
"Plenty of brass buttons," he exclaimed with the scorn of a man never to
be taken in by external show, "and plenty of gold braid! But after all,
a slave, a slave!"

No, he wanted to see his son free and influential, continuing the
conquest of the city, completing the family greatness of which he had
laid the foundations, getting power over people much as he himself had
gotten power over money. Ramon must become a lawyer, the only career for
a man destined to rule others. It was a passionate ambition the old
pettifogger had, to see his scion enter through the front door and with
head proudly erect, the precincts of the law, into which he had crawled
so cautiously and at the risk, more than once, of being dragged out with
a chain fastened to his ankle.

Ramon spent several years in Valencia without getting beyond the
elementary courses in Common Law. The cursed classes were held in the
morning, you see, and he had to go to bed at dawn--the hour when the
lights in the pool-rooms went out. Besides, in his quarters at the hotel
he had a magnificent shotgun--a present from his father; and
homesickness for the orchards made him pass many an afternoon at the
pigeon traps where he was far better known than at the University.

This fine specimen of masculine youth--tall, muscular, tanned, with a
pair of domineering eyes to which thick eyebrows gave a touch of
harshness--had been born for action, and excitement; Ramon simply
couldn't concentrate on books!

Old Brull, who through niggardliness and prudence had placed his son on
"half rations," as he put it, sent the boy just money enough to keep him
going; but dupe, in turn, of the wiles he had formerly practiced on the
rustics of Alcira, he was compelled to make frequent trips to Valencia,
to come to some understanding with money lenders there, who had
advanced loans to his son on such terms that insolvency might lead Ramon
to a prison cell.

Home to Alcira came rumors of other exploits by the "Prince," as don
Jaime called his boy in view of the latter's ability to run through
money. In parties with friends of the family, don Ramon's doings were
spoken of as scandalous actually--a duel after a quarrel at cards; then
a father and a brother--common workingmen in flannel shirts!--who had
sworn they would kill him if he didn't marry a certain girl he had been
taking to her shop by day and to dance-halls by night.

Old Brull made up his mind to tolerate these escapades of his son no
longer; and he made him give up his studies. Ramon would not be a
lawyer; well, after all, one didn't have to have a degree to be a man of
importance. Besides the father felt he was getting old; it was hard for
him to look after the working of his orchards personally. He could make
good use of that son who seemed to have been born to impose his will
upon everybody around him.

For some time past don Jaime had had his eye on the daughter of a friend
of his. The Brull house showed noticeable lack of a woman's presence.
His wife had died shortly after his retirement from business, and the
old codger stamped in rage at the slovenliness and laziness displayed by
his servants. He would marry Ramon to Bernarda--an ugly, ill-humored,
yellowish, skinny creature--but sole heiress to her father's three
beautiful orchards. Besides, she was conspicuous for her industrious,
economical ways, and a parsimony in her expenditures that came pretty
close to stinginess.

Ramon did as his father bade him. Brought up with all the ideas of a
rural skinflint, he thought no decent person could object to marrying an
ugly bad-tempered woman, so long as she had plenty of money.

The father-in-law and the daughter-in-law understood each other
perfectly. The old man's eyes would water at sight of that stern,
long-faced puritan, who never had much to say in the house, but went
into high dudgeon over the slightest waste on the part of the domestics,
scolding the farmhands for the merest oversight in the orchards,
haggling and wrangling with the orange drummers for a _centime_ more or
less per hundredweight. That new daughter of his was to be the solace of
his old age!

Meantime, the "prince" would be off hunting every morning in the nearby
mountains and lounging every afternoon in the cafe; but he was no longer
content with the admiration of the idlers hanging around a billiard
table, nor was he taking part in the game upstairs. He was frequenting
the circles of "serious" people now, had made friends with the _alcalde_
and was talking all the time of the great need for getting all "decent"
folk together to take the "rabble" in hand!

"Ambition is pecking at him," the old man gleefully remarked to his
daughter-in-law. "Let him alone, woman; he'll get there, he'll get
there... That's the way I like to see him."

Ramon began by winning a seat in the _Ayuntamiento_, and soon was an
outstanding figure there. The least objection to his views he regarded
as a personal insult; he would transfer debates in session out into the
streets and settle them there with threats and fisticuffs. His greatest
glory was to have his enemies say of him:

"Look out for that Ramon ... He's a tough proposition."

Along with all this combativeness, he sought to win friends by a lavish
hand that was his father's torment. He "did favors," assured a living,
that is, to every loafer and bully in town. He was ready to be "touched"
by anyone who could serve, in tavern and cafe, as advertising agent of
his rising fame.

And he rose rapidly, in fact. The old folks who had pushed him forward
with influence and counsel soon found themselves left far behind. In a
short time he had become _alcalde;_ his prestige outgrew the limits of
the city, spread over the whole district, and eventually reached the
capital of the province itself. He got able-bodied men exempted from
military service; he winked at corruption in the city councils that
backed him, although the perpetrators deserved to go to prison; he saw
to it that the constabulary was not too energetic in running down the
_roders_, the "wanderers," who, for some well-placed shot at election
time, would be forced to flee to the mountains. No one in the whole
country dared make a move without the previous consent of don Ramon,
whom his adherents always respectfully called their _quefe_, their
"chief."

Old Brull lived long enough to see Ramon reach the zenith of his fame.
That scallawag was realizing the old man's dream: the conquest of the
city, ruling over men where his father had gotten only money! And, in
addition don Jaime lived to see the perpetuation of the Brull dynasty
assured by the birth of a grandson, Rafael, the child of a couple who
had never loved each other, but were united only by avarice and
ambition.

Old Brull died like a saint. He departed this life with the consolation
of all the last sacraments. Every cleric in the city helped to waft his
soul heavenward with clouds of incense at the solemn obsequies. And,
though the rabble--the political opponents of the son, that is--recalled
those Wednesdays long before when the flock from the orchards would come
to let itself be fleeced in the old Shylock's office, all safe and sane
people--people who had something in this world to lose--mourned the
death of so worthy and industrious a man, a man who had risen from the
lowest estate and had finally been able to accumulate a fortune by hard
work, honest hard work!

In Rafael's father there still remained much of the wild student who had
caused so many tongues to wag in his youthful days. But his doings with
peasant girls were hushed up now; fear of the _cacique's_ power stifled
all gossip; and since, moreover, affairs with such lowly women cost very
little money, dona Bernarda pretended to know nothing about them. She
did not love her husband much. She was leading that narrow,
self-centered life of the country woman, who feels that all her duties
are fulfilled if she remains faithful to her mate and keeps saving
money.

By a noteworthy anomaly, she, who was so stingy, so thrifty, ready to
start a squabble on the public square in defense of the family money
against day-laborers or middlemen, was tolerance itself toward the
lavish expenditures of her husband in maintaining his political
sovereignty over the region.

Every election opened a new breach in the family fortune. Don Ramon
would receive orders to carry his district for some non-resident, who
might not have lived there more than a day or two. So those who governed
yonder in Madrid had ordered--and orders must be obeyed. In every town
whole muttons would be set turning over the fires. Tavern wine would
flow like water. Debts would be cancelled and fistfulls of _pesetas_
would be distributed among the most recalcitrant, all at don Ramon's
expense of course. And his wife, who wore a calico wrapper to save on
clothes and stinted so much on food that there was hardly anything left
for the servants to eat, would be arrayed in splendor when the day for
the contest came around, ready in her excitement to help her husband
throw the entire house through the window, if need be.

This, however, was all pure speculation on her part. The money that was
being scattered so madly broadcast was a "loan" simply. Some day she
would get it back with interest. Already her piercing eyes were
caressing the tiny, dark-complexioned, restless little creature that lay
across her knees, seeing in him the privileged heir-apparent who would
one day reap the harvest from all such family sacrifices.

Dona Bernarda had taken refuge in religion as in a cool, refreshing
oasis in the desert of vulgarity and monotony in her life. Her heart
would swell with pride every time a priest would say to her in the
church:

"Take good care of don Ramon. Thanks to him the wave of demagogy halts
at the temple door and evil fails to triumph in the District. He is the
bulwark of the Lord against the impious!"

And when, after such a declaration, which flattered her worldly vanity
and assured her of a mansion in Heaven, she would pass through the
streets of Alcira in her calico wrapper and a shawl not over-clean,
greeted affectionately, effusively, by the leading citizens, she would
pardon don Ramon all the infidelities she knew about and consider the
sacrifice of her fortune a good investment.

"If it were not for what we do, what would happen to the District....
The lower scum would conquer--those wild-eyed mechanics and common
laborers who read the Valencian newspapers and talk about equality all
the time. And they would divide up the orchards, and demand that the
product of the harvests--thousands and thousands of _duros_ paid for
oranges by the Englishmen and the French--should belong to all." But to
stave off such a cataclysm, there stood don Ramon, the scourge of the
wicked, the champion of "the cause" which he led to triumph, gun in
hand, at election time; and just as he was able to send any rebellious
trouble-maker off to the penal settlement, so he found it easy to keep
at liberty all those who, despite the various murders that figured in
their biographies, lent themselves to the service of the government in
this support of "law and order!"

The patrimony of the House of Brull went down and down, but its prestige
rose higher and higher. The sacks of money filled by the old man at the
cost of so much roguery were shaken empty over all the District; nor
were several assaults upon the municipal treasury sufficient to bring
them back to normal roundness. Don Ramon contemplated this squandering
impassively, proud that people should be talking of his generosity as
much as of his power.

The whole District worshipped as a sacred flagstaff that bronzed,
muscular, massive figure, which floated a huge, flowing, gray-flecked
mustache from its upper end.

"Don Ramon, you ought to remove that bush," his clerical friends would
say to him with a smile of affectionate banter. "Why, man, you look just
like Victor Emmanuel himself, the Pope's jailer."

But though don Ramon was a fervent Catholic (who never went to mass),
and hated all the infidel turnkeys of the Holy Father, he would grin and
give a satisfied twirl at the offending mouth-piece, quite flattered at
bottom to be likened to a king.

The _patio_ of the Brull mansion was the throne of his sovereignty. His
partisans would find him there, pacing up and down among the green boxes
of plantain trees, his hands clasped behind his broad, strong, but now
somewhat stooping back--a majestic back withal, capable of supporting
hosts and hosts of friends.

There he "administered justice," decided the fate of families, settled
the affairs of towns--all in a few off-hand but short and decisive
words, like one of those ancient Moorish kings who, in that selfsame
territory, centuries before, legislated for their subjects under the
open sky. On market-days the _patio_ would be thronged. Carts would stop
in long lines on either side of the door. All the hitching-posts along
the streets would have horses tied to them, and inside, the house would
be buzzing like a bee-hive with the chatter of that rustic gentry.

Don Ramon would give them all a hearing, frowning gravely meanwhile, his
chin on his bosom and one hand on the head of the little Rafael at his
side--a pose copied from a chromo of the Kaiser petting the Crown
Prince.

On afternoons when the _Ayuntamiento_ was in session, the chief could
never leave his _patio_. Of course not a chair in the city hall could be
dusted without his permission; but he preferred to remain invisible,
like a god, knowing well that his power would seem more terrible if it
spoke only from the pillar of fire or from the whirlwind.

All day long city councilors would go trotting back and forth from the
City Hall to the Brull _patio._ The few enemies don Ramon had in the
Council--meddlers, dona Bernarda called them--idiots who swallowed
everything in print provided it were against the King and
religion--attacked the _cacique_ persistently, censuring everything he
did. Don Ramon's henchmen would tremble with impotent rage. "That charge
must be answered! Let's see now: somebody go and ask the boss!"

And a _regidor_ would be off to don Ramon's like a greyhound; and
arriving at the _patio_ panting, out of breath, he would heave a sigh of
relief and contentment at sight of "the chief" there, pacing up and down
as usual, ready to get his friends out of their difficulties as if the
limitless resources of Providence were at his command. "So-and-So said
this-and-that!" Don Ramon would stop in his tracks, think a moment, and
finally say, in an enigmatic oracular voice: "Very well, tell him to put
this in his pipe and smoke it!" Whereupon the henchman, mouth agape,
would rush back to the session like a racehorse. His companions would
gather about him eager to know the reply that don Ramon's wisdom had
deigned to suggest; and a quarrel would start then, each one anxious to
have the privilege of annihilating the enemy with the magic words--all
talking at the same time like magpies suddenly set chattering by the
dawn of a new light.

If the opposition held its ground, again stupefaction would come over
them. Another mad dash in quest of a new consultation. Thus the sessions
would go by, to the great delight of the barber Cupido--the sharpest and
meanest tongue in the city--who, whenever the Council met, would observe
to his early morning shaves:

"Holiday today: the usual race of councilors bare-back."

When party exigencies forced don Ramon to be out of town, it was his
wife, the energetic dona Bernarda, who attended to the consultations,
issuing statements on party policy, as wise and apt as those of "the
chief" himself.

This collaboration in the upbuilding and the up-holding of the family
influence was the single bond of union between husband and wife. This
cold woman, a complete stranger to tenderness, would flush with pleasure
every time the chief approved her ideas. If only she were "boss" of "the
Party!" ...Don Andres had often said as much himself!

This don Andres was her husband's most intimate friend, one of those men
who are born to be second everywhere and in everything. Loyal to the
family to the point of sacrifice, he served, with the couple itself, to
fill out the Holy Trinity of the Brull religion that was the faith of
all the District. Where don Ramon could not go in person, don Andres
would be present for him, as the chief's _alter ego_. In the towns he
was respected as the supreme vicar of that god whose throne was in the
_patio_ of the plantain trees; and people too shy to lay their
supplications before the god himself, would seek out that jolly
advocate,--a very approachable bachelor, who always had a smile on his
tanned, wrinkled face, and a story under his stiff cigar-stained
mustache.

Don Andres had no relatives, and spent almost all his time at the
Brull's. He was like a piece of furniture that seems always to be
getting in the way at first; but when all were once accustomed to him,
he became an indispensable fixture in the family. In the days when don
Ramon had been a young subordinate of the _Ayuntamiento_, he had met and
liked the man, and taking him into the ranks of his "heelers," had
promoted him rapidly to be chief of staff. In the opinion of the "boss,"
there wasn't a cleverer, shrewder fellow in the world than don Andres,
nor one with a better memory for names and faces. Brull was the
strategist who directed the campaign; don Andres the tactician who
commanded actual operations and cleaned up behind the lines when the
enemy was divided and undone. Don Ramon was given to settling everything
in a violent manner, and drew his gun at the slightest provocation. If
his methods had been followed, "the Party" would have murdered someone
every day. Don Andres had a smooth tongue and a seraphic smile that
simply wound _alcaldes_ or rebellious electors around his little
finger, and his specialty was the art of letting loose a rain of sealed
documents over the District that started complicated and never-ending
prosecutions against troublesome opponents.

He attended to "the chief's" correspondence, and was tutor and playmate
to the little Rafael, taking the boy on long walks through the orchard
country. To dona Bernarda he was confidential adviser.

That surly, severe woman showed her bare heart to no one in the world
save don Andres. Whenever he called her his "senora," or his "worthy
mistress," she could not restrain a gesture of satisfaction; and it was
to him that she poured out her complaints against her husband's
misdeeds. Her affection for him was that of a dame of ancient chivalry
for her private squire. Enthusiasm for the glory of the house united
them in such intimacy that the opposition wagged its tongues, asserting
that dona Bernarda was getting even for her husband's waywardness. But
don Andres, who smiled scornfully when accused of taking advantage of
the chief's influence to drive hard bargains to his own advantage, was
not the man to be trifled with if gossip ventured to smirch his
friendship with the _senora_.