The Torrent by Vicente Blasco Ibanez
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Vicente Blasco Ibanez >> The Torrent
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He pictured to himself the tiny kingdoms of those old _walis_; vassal
districts very like the one his family ruled. But instead of resting on
influence, bribery, intimidation, and the abuse of law, they lived by
the lances of horsemen as apt at tilling the soil as at capering in
tournaments with an elegance never equalled by any chevaliers of the
North. He could see the court of Valencia, with the romantic gardens of
Ruzafa, where poets sang mournful strophes over the wane of the
Valencian Moor, while beautiful maidens listened from behind the
blossoming rose-bushes. And then the catastrophe came. In a torrent of
steel, barbarians swept down from the arid hills of Aragon to appease
their hunger in the bounty of the plain--the _almogavares_--naked, wild,
bloodthirsty savages, who never washed. And as allies of this horde,
bankrupt Christian noblemen, their worn-out lands mortgaged to the
Israelite, but good cavalrymen, withal, armored, and with dragonwings on
their helmets; and among the Christians, adventurers of various tongues,
soldiers of fortune out for plunder and booty in the name of the Cross
--the "black sheep" of every Christian family. And they seized the great
garden of Valencia, installed themselves in the Moorish palaces, called
themselves counts and marquises, and with their swords held that
privileged country for the King of Aragon, while the conquered Saracens
continued to fertilize it with their toil.
"Valencia, Valencia, Valencia! Thy walls are ruins, thy gardens
grave-yards, thy sons slaves unto the Christian ..." groaned the poet,
covering his eyes with his cloak. And Rafael could see, passing like
phantoms before his eyes, leaning forward on the necks of small, sleek,
sinewy horses, that seemed to fly over the ground, their legs
horizontal, their nostrils belching smoke, the Moors, the real people of
Valencia, conquered, degenerated by the very abundance of their soil,
abandoning their gardens before the onrush of brutal, primitive
invaders, speeding on their way toward the unending night of African
barbarism. At this eternal exile of the first Valencians who left to
oblivion and decay a civilization, the last vestiges of which today
survive in the universities of Fez, Rafael felt the sorrow he would have
experienced had it all been a disaster to his family or his party.
While he was thinking of all these dead things, life in its feverish
agitation surrounded him. A cloud of sparrows was darting about the roof
of the Hermitage. On the mountain side a flock of dark-fleeced sheep was
grazing; and when any of them discovered a blade of grass among the
rocks, they would begin calling to one another with a melancholy
bleating.
Rafael could hear the voices of some women who seemed to be climbing the
road, and from his reclining position he finally made out two parasols
that were gradually rising to view over the edge of his bench. One was
of flaming red silk, skilfully embroidered and suggesting the filigreed
dome of a mosque; the second, of flowered calico, was apparently keeping
at a respectful distance behind the first.
Two women entered the little square, and as Rafael sat up and removed
his hat, the taller, who seemed to be the mistress, acknowledged his
courtesy with a slight bow, went on to the other end of the esplanade,
and stood, with her back turned toward him, looking at the view. The
other sat down some distance off, breathing laboriously from the
exertion of the climb.
Who were those women?... Rafael knew the whole city, and had never seen
them.
The one seated near him was doubtless the servant of the other--her maid
or her companion. She was dressed in black, simply but with a certain
charm, like the French soubrettes he had seen in illustrated novels. But
rustic origin and lack of cultivation were evident from the stains on
the backs of her unshapely hands; from her broad, flat, finger-nails;
and from her large ungainly feet, quite out of harmony with the pair of
stylish boots she was wearing--cast-off articles, doubtless, of the
lady. She was pretty, nevertheless, with a fresh exuberance of youth.
Her large, gray, credulous eyes were those of a stupid but playful lamb;
her hair, straight, and a very light blond, hung loosely here and there
over a freckled face, dark with sunburn. She handled her closed parasol
somewhat awkwardly and kept looking anxiously at the doubled gold chain
that drooped from her neck to her waist, as if to reassure herself that
a gift long-coveted had not been lost.
Rafael's interest drifted to the lady. His eyes rested on the back of a
head of tightly-gathered golden hair, as luminous as a burnished helmet;
on a white neck, plump, rounded; on a pair of broad, lithe shoulders,
hidden under a blue silk blouse, the lines tapering rapidly, gracefully
toward the waist; on a gray skirt, finally, falling in harmonious folds
like the draping of a statue, and under the hem the solid heels of two
shoes of English style encasing feet that must have been as agile and as
strong as they were tiny.
The lady called to her maid in a voice that was sonorous, vibrant,
velvety, though Rafael could catch only the accented syllables of her
words, that seemed to melt together in the melodious silence of the
mountain top. The young man was sure she had not spoken Spanish. A
foreigner, almost certainly!...
She was expressing admiration and enthusiasm for the view, talking
rapidly, pointing out the principal towns that could be seen, calling
them by their names,--the only words that Rafael could make out clearly.
Who was this woman whom he had never seen, who spoke a foreign language
and yet knew the _ribera_ well? Perhaps the wife of one of the French or
English orange-dealers established in the city! Meanwhile his eyes were
devouring that superb, that opulent, that elegant beauty which seemed to
be challenging him with its indifference to his presence.
The keeper of the Hermitage issued cautiously from the house--a peasant
who made his living from visitors to the heights. Attracted by the
promising appearance of the strange lady, the hermit came forward to
greet her, offering to fetch water from the cistern, and to unveil the
image of the miraculous virgin, in her honor.
The woman turned around to answer the man, and that gave Rafael an
opportunity to study her at his leisure. She was tall, ever so tall, as
tall as he perhaps. But the impression her height of stature made was
softened by a grace of figure that revealed strength allied to elegance.
A strong bust, sculpturesque, supporting a head that engaged the young
man's wrapt attention. A hot mist of emotion seemed to cloud his vision
as he looked into her large eyes, so green, so luminous! The golden hair
fell forward upon a forehead of pearly whiteness, veined at the temples
with delicate lines of blue. Viewed in profile her gracefully moulded
nose, quivering with vitality at the nostrils, filled out a beauty that
was distinctly modern, piquantly charming. In those lineaments, Rafael
thought he could recognize any number of famous actresses. He had seen
her before. Where?... He did not know. Perhaps in some illustrated
weekly! Perhaps in some album of stage celebrities! Or maybe on the
cover of some match-box--a common medium of publicity for famous
European belles. Of one thing he was certain: at sight of that wonderful
face he felt as though he were meeting an old friend after a long
absence.
The recluse, in hopes of a perquisite, led the two women toward the door
of the hermitage, where his wife and daughter had appeared, to feast
their eyes on the huge diamonds sparkling at the ears of the strange
lady.
"Enter, _sinorita_" the rustic invited. "I'll show you the Virgin, the
Virgin _del Lluch_, you understand, the only genuine one. She came here
alone all the way from Majorca. People down in Palma claim they have the
real Virgin. But what can they say for themselves? They are jealous
because our Lady chose Alcira; and here we have her, proving that she's
the real one by the miracles she works."
He opened the door of the tiny church, which was as cool and gloomy as a
cellar. At the rear, on a baroque altar of tarnished gold, stood the
little statue with its hollow cloak and its black face.
Rapidly, by rote almost, the good man recited the history of the image.
The Virgin _del Lluch_ was the patroness of Majorca. A hermit had been
compelled to flee from there, for a reason no one had been able to
discover--perhaps to get away from some Saracen girl of those exciting,
war-like days! And to rescue the Virgin from profanation he brought her
to Alcira, and built this sanctuary for her. Later people from Majorca
came to return her to their island. But the celestial lady had taken a
liking to Alcira and its inhabitants. Over the water, and without even
wetting her feet, she came gliding back. Then the Majorcans, to keep
what had happened quiet, counterfeited a new statue that looked just
like the first. All this was gospel truth, and as proof, there lay the
original hermit buried at the foot of the altar; and there was the
Virgin, too, her face blackened by the sun and the salt wind on her
miraculous voyage over the sea.
The beautiful lady smiled slightly, as she listened. The maid was all
ears, not to lose a word of a language she but half understood, her
credulous peasant eyes traveling from the Virgin to the hermit and from
the hermit to the Virgin, plainly expressing the wonder she was feeling
at such a portentous miracle. Rafael had followed the party into the
shrine and taken a position near the fascinating stranger. She, however,
pretended not to see him.
"That is only a legend," he ventured to remark, when the rustic had
finished his story. "You understand, of course, that nobody hereabouts
accepts such tales as true."
"I suppose so," the lady answered coldly.
"Legend or no legend, don Rafael," the recluse grumbled, somewhat
peeved, "that's what my grandfather and all the folk of his day used to
say; and that's what people still believe. If the story has been handed
down so long, there must be something to it."
The patch of sunlight that shone through the doorway upon the flagstones
was darkened by the shadow of a woman. It was a poorly clad orchard
worker, young, it seemed, but with a face pale, and as rough as wrinkled
paper, all the crevices and hollows of her cranium showing, her eyes
sunken and dull, her unkempt hair escaping from beneath her knotted
kerchief. She was barefoot, carrying her shoes in her hand. She stood
with her legs wide apart, as if in an effort to keep her balance. She
seemed to feel intense pain whenever she stepped upon the ground.
Illness and poverty were written on every feature of her person.
The recluse knew her well; and as the unfortunate creature, panting with
the effort of the climb, sank upon a little bench to rest her feet, he
told her story briefly to the visitors.
She was ill, very, very ill. With no faith in doctors, who, according to
her, "treated her with nothing but words"; she believed that the Virgin
_del Lluch_ would ultimately cure her. And, though at home she could
scarcely move from her chair and was always being scolded by her husband
for neglecting the housework, every week she would climb the steep
mountain-side, barefoot, her shoes in her hand.
The hermit approached the sick woman, accepting a copper coin she
offered. A few couplets to the Virgin, as usual, he supposed!
"Visanteta, a few _gochos_!" shouted the rustic, going to the door. And
his daughter came into the chapel--a dirty, dark-skinned creature with
African eyes, who might just have escaped from a gipsy band.
She took a seat upon a bench, turning her back upon the Virgin with the
bored ill-humored expression of a person compelled to do a dull task day
after day; and in a hoarse, harsh, almost frantic voice, which echoed
deafeningly in that small enclosure, she began a drawling chant that
rehearsed the story of the statue and the portentous miracles it had
wrought.
The sick woman, kneeling before the altar without releasing her hold
upon her shoes, the heels of her feet, which were bruised and bleeding
from the stones, showing from under her skirts, repeated a refrain at
the end of each stanza, imploring the protection of the Virgin. Her
voice had a weak and hollow sound, like the wail of a child. Her sunken
eyes, misty with tears, were fixed upon the Virgin with a dolorous
expression of supplication. Her words came more tremulous and more
distant at each couplet.
The beautiful stranger was plainly affected at the pitiful sight. Her
maid had knelt and was following the sing-song rhythm of the chant, with
prayers in a language that Rafael recognized at last. It was Italian.
"What a great thing faith is!" the lady murmured with a sigh.
"Yes, _senora_; a beautiful thing!"
Rafael tried to think of something "brilliant" on the grandeur of faith,
from Saint Thomas, or one of the other "sound" authors he had studied.
But he ransacked his memory in vain. Nothing! That charming woman had
filled his mind with thoughts far other than quotations from the
Fathers!
The couplets to the Virgin came to an end. With the last stanza the wild
singer disappeared; and the sick woman, after several abortive efforts,
rose painfully to her feet. The recluse approached her with the
solicitude of a shopkeeper concerned for the quality of his wares. Were
things going any better? Were the visits to the Virgin doing good?...
The unfortunate woman did not dare to answer, for fear of offending the
miraculous Lady. She did not know!... Yes ... she really must be a
little better ... But that climb!... This offering had not had such good
results as the previous ones, she thought; but she had faith: the Virgin
would be good to her and cure her in the end. At the church door she
collapsed from pain. The recluse placed her on his chair and ran to the
cistern to get a glass of water. The Italian maid, her eyes bulging with
fright, leaned over the poor woman, petting her:
"_Poverina! Poverina!... Coraggio_!" The invalid, rallying from her
swoon, opened her eyes and gazed vacantly at the stranger, not
understanding her words but guessing their kindly intention.
The lady stepped out to the _plazoleta_, deeply moved, it seemed, by
what she had been witnessing. Rafael followed, with affected
absent-mindedness, somewhat ashamed of his insistence, yet at the same
time looking for an opportunity to renew their conversation.
On finding herself once more in the presence of that wonderful panorama,
where the eye ran unobstructed to the very limit of the horizon, the
charming creature seemed to breathe more freely.
"Good God!" she exclaimed, as if speaking to herself. "How sad and yet
how wonderful! This view is ever so beautiful. But that woman!... That
poor woman!"
"She's been that way for years, to my personal knowledge," Rafael
remarked, pretending to have known the invalid for a long time, though
he had scarcely ever deigned to notice her before. "Our peasants are
queer people. They despise doctors, and refuse their help, preferring to
kill themselves with these barbarous prayers and devotions, which they
expect will do them good."
"But they may be right, after all!" the lady replied. "Disease is often
incurable, and science can do for it about as much as faith--sometimes,
even less.... But here we are laughing and enjoying ourselves while
suffering passes us by, rubs elbows with us even, without our
noticing!"...
Rafael was at a loss for reply. What sort of woman was this? What a way
she had of talking! Accustomed as he was to the commonplace chatter of
his mother's friends, and still under the influence of this meeting,
which had so deeply disturbed him, the poor boy imagined himself in the
presence of a sage in skirts--a philosopher under the disguise of
female beauty come from beyond the Pyrenees, from some gloomy German
alehouse perhaps, to upset his peace of mind.
The stranger was silent for a time, her gaze fixed upon the horizon.
Then around her attractive sensuous lips, through which two rows of
shining, dazzling teeth were gleaming, the suggestion of a smile began
to play, a smile of joy at the landscape.
"How beautiful this all is!" she exclaimed, without turning toward her
companion. "How I have longed to see it again!"
At last the opportunity had come to ask the question he had been so
eager to put: and she herself had offered the opportunity!
"Do you come from here?" he asked, in a tremulous voice, fearing lest
his inquisitiveness be scornfully repelled.
"Yes," the lady replied, curtly.
"Well, that's strange. I have never seen you...."
"There's nothing strange about that. I arrived only yesterday."
"Just as I said!... I know everyone in the city. My name is Rafael
Brull. I'm the son of don Ramon, who was mayor of Alcira many times."
At last he had let it out! The poor fellow had been dying to reveal his
name, tell who he was, pronounce that magic word so influential in the
District, certain it would be the "Open Sesame" to that wonderful
stranger's grace! After that, perhaps, she would tell him who she was!
But the lady commented on his declaration with an "Ah!" of cold
indifference. She did not show that his name was even known to her,
though she did sweep him with a rapid, scrutinizing, half-mocking glance
that seemed to betray a hidden thought:
"Not bad-looking, but what a dunce!"
Rafael blushed, feeling he had made a false step in volunteering his
name with the pompousness he would have used toward some bumpkin of the
region.
A painful silence followed. Rafael was anxious to get out of his plight.
That glacial indifference, that disdainful courtesy, which, without a
trace of rudeness, still kept him at a distance, hurt his vanity to the
quick. But since there was no stopping now, he ventured a second
question:
"And are you thinking of remaining in Alcira very long?..."
Rafael thought the ground was giving way beneath his feet. Another
glance from those green eyes! But, alas, this time it was cold and
menacing, a livid flash of lightning refracted from a mirror of ice.
"I don't know ..." she answered, with a deliberateness intended to
accentuate unmistakable scorn. "I usually leave places the moment they
begin to bore me." And looking Rafael squarely in the face she added,
with freezing formality, after a pause:
"Good afternoon, sir."
Rafael was crushed. He saw her turn toward the doorway of the sanctuary
and call her maid. Every step of hers, every movement of her proud
figure, seemed to raise a barrier in front of him. He saw her bend
affectionately over the sick orchard-woman, open a little pink bag that
her maid handed her, and, rummaging about among some sparkling trinkets
and embroidered handkerchiefs, draw out a hand filled with shining
silver coins. She emptied the money into the apron of the astonished
peasant girl, gave something as well to the recluse, who was no less
astounded, and then, opening her red parasol, walked off, followed by
her maid.
As she passed Rafael, she answered the doffing of his hat with a barely
perceptible inclination of her head; and, without looking at him,
started on her way down the stony mountain path.
The young man stood gazing after her through the pines and the cypresses
as her proud athletic figure grew smaller in the distance.
The perfume of her presence seemed to linger about him when she had
gone, obsessing him with the atmosphere of superiority and exotic
elegance that emanated from her whole being.
Rafael noticed finally that the recluse was approaching, unable to
restrain a desire to communicate his admiration to someone.
"What a woman!" the man cried, rolling his eyes to express his full
enthusiasm.
She had given him a _duro_, one of those white discs which, in that
atheistic age, so rarely ascended that mountain trail! And there the
poor invalid sat at the door of the Hermitage, staring into her apron
blankly, hypnotized by the glitter of all that wealth! _Duros, pesetas_,
two-_pesetas_, dimes! All the money the lady had brought! Even a gold
button, which must have come from her glove!
Rafael shared in the general astonishment. But who the devil was that
woman?
"How do I know!" the rustic answered. "But judging from the language of
the maid," he went on with great conviction: "I should say she was some
Frenchwoman ... some Frenchwoman ... with a pile of money!"
Rafael turned once more in the direction of the two parasols that were
slowly winding down the slope. They were barely visible now. The larger
of the two, a mere speck of red, was already blending into the green of
the first orchards on the plain ... At last it had disappeared
completely.
Left alone, Rafael burst into rage! The place where he had made such a
sorry exhibition of himself seemed odious to him now. He fumed with
vexation at the memory of that cold glance, which had checked any
advance toward familiarity, repelled him, crushed him! The thought of
his stupid questions filled him with hot shame.
Without replying to the "good-evening" from the recluse and his family,
he started down the mountain, in hopes of meeting the woman again,
somewhere, some time, he knew not when nor how. The heir of don Ramon,
the hope of the District, strode furiously on, his arms aquiver with a
nervous tremor. And aggressively, menacingly, addressing his own ego as
though it were a henchman cringing terror-stricken in front of him, he
muttered:
"You imbecile!... You lout!... You peasant! You provincial ass! You ...
rube!"
IV
Dona Bernarda did not suspect the reason why her son rose on the
following morning pale, and with dark rings under his eyes, as if he had
spent a bad night. Nor could his political friends guess, that
afternoon, why in such fine weather, Rafael should come and shut himself
up in the stifling atmosphere of the Club.
When he came in, a crowd of noisy henchmen gathered round him to discuss
all over again the great news that had been keeping "the Party" in
feverish excitement for a week past: the Cortes were to be dissolved!
The newspapers had been talking of nothing else. Within two or three
months, before the close of the year at the latest, there would be a new
election, and therewith, as all averred, a landslide for don Rafael
Brull. The intimate friend and lieutenant of the House of Brull was the
best informed. If the elections took place on the date indicated by the
newspapers, Rafael would still be five or six months short of his
twenty-fifth birth-day. But don Andres had written to Madrid to consult
the Party leaders. The prime minister was agreeable--"there were
precedents!"--and even though Rafael should be a few weeks short of the
legal age, the seat would go to him just the same. They would send no
more "foundlings" from Madrid! Alcira would have no more "unknowns"
foisted upon her! And the whole Tribe of Brull dependents was preparing
for the contest with the enthusiasm of a prize-fighter sure of victory
beforehand.
All this bustling expectation left Rafael cold. For years he had been
looking forward to that election time, when the chance would come for
his free life in Madrid. Now that it was at hand he was completely
indifferent to the whole matter, as if he were the last person in the
world concerned.
He looked impatiently at the table where don Andres, with three other
leading citizens, was having his daily hand at cards before coming to
sit down at Rafael's side. That was a canny habit of don Andres. He
liked to be seen in his capacity of Regent, sheltering the heir-apparent
under the wing of his prestige and experienced wisdom.
Well along in the afternoon, when the Club parlor was less crowded with
members, the atmosphere freer of smoke, and the ivory balls less noisy
on the green cloth, don Andres considered his game at an end, and took a
chair in his disciple's circle, where as usual Rafael was sitting with
the most parasitic and adulatory of his partisans.
The boy pretended to be listening to their conversation, but all the
while he was preparing mentally a question he had decided to put to don
Andres the day before.
At last he made up his mind.
"You know everybody, don Andres. Well, yesterday, up on San Salvador, I
met a fine-looking woman who seems to be a foreigner. She says she's
living here. Who is she?"
The old man burst into a loud laugh, and pushed his chair back from the
table, so that his big paunch would have room to shake in.
"So you've seen her, too!" he exclaimed between one guffaw and another.
"Well, sir, what a city this is! That woman got in the day before
yesterday, and everybody's seen her already. She's the talk of the town.
You were the only one who hadn't asked me about her so far. And now
you've bitten!... Ho! Ho! Ho! What a place this is!"
When he had had his laugh out--Rafael, meanwhile, did not see the
joke--he continued in more measured style:
"That 'foreign woman,' as you call her, boy, comes from Alcira. In fact,
she was born about two doors from you. Don't you know dona Pepa, 'the
doctor's woman,' they call her--a little lady who has an orchard close
by the river and lives in the Blue House, that's always under water when
the Jucar floods? She once owned the place you have just beyond where
you live, and she's the one who sold it to your father--the only
property don Ramon ever bought, so far as I know. Don't you remember?"
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