The Torrent by Vicente Blasco Ibanez
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Vicente Blasco Ibanez >> The Torrent
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Rafael answered her inquiries with bated breath.
"What you have done," the prima donna was saying, "deserves my deep,
deep gratitude! It is a chivalrous act worthy of ancient times.
Lohengrin, arriving in his little boat to save Elsa! Only the swan is
lacking ...unless you want to call Cupido a swan...."
"And suppose you had been carried off--drowned!..." the youth exclaimed
in justification of his rashness.
"Drowned!...I must confess that at first I was somewhat afraid. Not so
much of dying, for I'm somewhat tired of life--as you will realize after
you've known me a little longer. But a death like that, suffocated in
that mud, that filthy, dirty water that smells so bad, doesn't at all
appeal to me. If it were some green, transparent Swiss lake!... I want
beauty even in death; I'm concerned with the 'final posture,' like the
Romans, and I was afraid of perishing here like a rat in a sewer.... And
nevertheless, I couldn't help laughing at my aunt and our poor servants
to see the fright they were in!... Now the water is no longer rising,
and the house is strong. Our only trouble is that we're cut off, and
I'm waiting for daylight to come so that we can see where we are. The
sight of all this country changed into a lake must be very beautiful,
isn't it, Rafael?"
"You've probably seen far more interesting things," the young man
replied.
"I don't deny that; but I'm always most impressed by the sensation of
the moment."
And she fell silent, showing by her sudden seriousness the vexation that
his distant allusion to her past had caused.
For some moments neither of them spoke; and it was Leonora who finally
broke the silence.
"The truth is, if the water had gone on rising, we would have owed our
lives to you.... Let's see, now, frankly: why did you come? What kind
inspiration made you think of me. You hardly know me!"
Rafael blushed with embarrassment, and trembled from head to foot, as if
she had asked him for a mortal confession. He was on the point of
uttering the great truth, baring in one great explosion all his thoughts
and dreams and dreads of past days. But he restrained himself and
grasped wildly for an answer.
"My enthusiasm for the artist," he replied timidly. "I admire your
talent very much."
Leonora burst into a noisy laugh.
"But you don't know me! You've never heard me sing!... What do you know
about my "talent," as they call it? If it weren't for that chatterbox of
a Cupido, Alcira would never dream that I am a singer and that I'm
somewhat well-known--except in my own country."
Rafael was crushed by the reply; he did not dare protest.
"Come, Rafael," the woman continued affectionately, "don't be a child
and try to pass off the fibs boys use to deceive mama with. I know why
you came here. Do you imagine you haven't been seen from this very
balcony hovering about here every afternoon, lurking in the road like a
spy? You are discovered, sir."
The shy Rafael thought the balcony was collapsing underneath his feet.
He shivered in abject terror, drew the fur cloak tighter around him,
without knowing what he was about, and shook his head in energetic
denial.
"So it's not true, you fraud?" she said, with comic indignation. "You
deny that since we met up at the Hermitage you have been taking all your
walks in this neighborhood? _Dios mio_! What a monster of falsehood have
we here? And how brazenly he lies."
And Rafael, vanquished by her frank merriment, had finally to smile,
confessing his crime with a loud laugh.
"You're probably surprised at what I do and say," continued Leonora
drawing closer to him, leaning a shoulder against his with unaffected
carelessness, as if she were with a girl friend. "I'm not like most
women. A fine thing it would be for me, with the life I lead, to play
the hypocrite!... My poor aunt thinks I'm crazy because I say just what
I feel; in my time I've been much liked and much disliked on account of
the mania I have for not concealing anything.... Do you want me to tell
you the real truth?... Very well; you've come here because you love me,
or, at least, because you think you love me: a failing all boys of your
age have, as soon as they find a woman different from the others they
know."
Rafael bowed his head and said nothing; he did not dare look up. He felt
the gaze of those green eyes upon the back of his head and they seemed
to reach right into his soul.
"Let's see your face. Raise that head of yours a little. Why don't you
say it isn't so, as you did before? Am I right or not?"
"And supposing you were right?..." Rafael ventured to murmur, finding
himself thus suddenly discovered.
"Since I know I am, I thought it best to provoke this explanation, so as
to avoid any misunderstandings. After what has happened to-night, I want
to have you for a friend; friend you understand, and nothing more; a
comradeship based on gratitude. We ought to know in advance exactly
where we stand. We'll be friends, won't we?... You must feel quite at
home here; and I'm sure I shall find you a very agreeable chum. What
you've done to-night has given you a greater hold on my affection than
you could ever have gained in any ordinary social way; but you're going
to promise me that you won't drift into any of that silly love-making
that has always been the bane of my existence."
"And if I can't help myself?" murmured Rafael.
"'And if I can't help myself'," said Leonora, laughing and mimicking
the voice of the young man and the expression on his face. "'And if I
can't help myself'! That's what they all say! And why can't you help
yourself? How can one take seriously a love for a woman you are now
seeing for the second time? These sudden passions are all inventions of
you men. They're not genuine. You get them out of the novels you read,
or out of the operas we sing. Nonsense that poets write and callow boys
swallow like so many boobies and try to transplant into real life! The
trouble is we singers are in the secret, and laugh at such bosh. Well,
now you know--good friends, and the soft pedal on sentiment and drama,
eh? In that way we'll get along very well and the house will be yours."
Leonora paused and, threatening him playfully with her forefinger,
added:
"Otherwise, you may consider me just as ungrateful and cruel as you
please, but your gallant conduct of to-night won't count. You'll not be
permitted to enter this place again. I want no adorers; I have come here
looking for rest, friendship, peace ... Love! A beautiful, cruel
hoax!..."
She was speaking very earnestly, without moving, her gaze lost on that
immense sheet of water.
Rafael dared to look at her squarely now. He had raised his head and was
studying her as she stood there thinking. Her beautiful face was tinted
with a bluish light, that seemed to surround her with a halo of romance.
Morning was coming on, and the leaden curtains of the sky were rent in
the direction of the sea, allowing a livid light to filter through.
Leonora shivered as if from cold, and snuggled instinctively against
Rafael. With a shake of her head she seemed to rout a troop of painful
thoughts, and stretching out a hand to him she said:
"Which shall it be? Friends, or distant acquaintances? Do you promise to
be good, be a real comrade?"
Rafael eagerly clasped that soft, muscular hand, and felt her rings cut
deliciously into his fingers.
"Very well--friends then!... I'll resign myself, since there's no help
for it."
"In that case you will find what you now believe a sacrifice something
quite tolerable and quite consoling; you don't know me, but I know
myself. Believe me, even should I come to love you--as I never
shall--you would be the loser by it. I am worth much more as a friend
than as a lover. And more than one man in the world has found that out."
"I will be a friend, ready to do much more for you than I've done
to-night. I hope you will come to know me too."
"No promises now! What more can you do for me? The river doesn't flood
every day. You can't expect to be a hero every other moment. No, I'm
satisfied with to-night's exploit. You can't imagine how grateful I am.
It has made a very deep impression on my--friendly--heart.... May I be
quite frank? Well, when I met you there at the Hermitage, I took you for
one of these local _senoritos_ who have such an easy time of it in town,
and so, look upon every woman they meet as their property for the
asking. Afterwards, when I saw you lurking about the house, my scorn
increased. 'Who does that little dandy think he is?' I said to myself.
And how Beppa and I laughed over it! I hadn't even noticed your face
and your figure: I hadn't realized how handsome you were...."
Leonora laughed at the thought of how angry she had been, and Rafael,
overwhelmed by such candor, likewise smiled to conceal his
embarrassment.
"But after what happened to-night I am fond of you ... as people are
fond of friends. I am alone here: the friendship of a good and noble boy
like yourself, capable of sacrifice for a woman whom he hardly knows, is
a very comforting thing to have. Besides, that much doesn't compromise
me. I am a bird of passage, you see; I have alighted here because I'm
tired, ill--I don't just know what's the matter, but deeply broken in
spirit anyhow. I need rest, just plain existence--a plunge into sweet
nothingness, where I can forget everything; and I gratefully accept your
friendship. Later on, when you least expect it, probably, I'll fly away.
The very first morning when I wake up, feel quite myself again--and hear
inside my head the song of the mischievous bird that has advised me to
do so many foolish things in my life--I'll pack up my trunk and take
flight! I'll drop you a line of course; I'll send you newspaper
clippings that speak of me, and you'll see you have a friend who does
not forget you and who sends you greetings from London, Saint
Petersburg, or New York--any one of the corners of this world which many
believe so large yet where I am unable to stir without encountering
things that bore me."
"May that moment be long delayed!" said Rafael. "May it never come!"
"Rash boy!" Leonora exclaimed. "You don't know me. If I were to stay
here very long, we'd finish by quarreling and coming to blows. At bottom
I hate men: I have always been their most terrible enemy."
Behind their backs they heard the rustle of the gown that Cupido was
dragging along behind him with absurd antics. He was coming to the
balcony with dona Pepita to see the sunrise.
Through its dense clouds the sky was beginning to shed a gray, wan
light, under which the vast, watery plain took on the whitish color of
absinthe. Down the stream the debris of the inundation was floating,
sweepings of wretched poverty, uprooted trees, clumps of reeds, thatched
roofs from huts, all dirty, slimy, nauseating. Bits of flotsam and
jetsam became entangled between the orange-trees and formed dams that
little by little grew with the new spoils brought along by the current.
In the distance at the very end of the lake, a number of black points
could be seen in regular rhythmic motion, stirring their legs like
aquatic flies around some roofs barely protruding above the immense
field of water. The rescuers had arrived from Valencia--with whale-boats
of the Fleet, brought overland by rail to the scene of the flood.
The provincial authorities would soon be arriving in Alcira; and the
presence of Rafael was indispensable. Cupido himself, with sudden
gravity, advised him to go and meet those boats.
While the barber was putting on his own clothes, Rafael, with intense
regret, removed his fur cloak. It seemed that in taking it off he was
losing the warmth of that night of sweet intimacy, the contact of that
soft shoulder that had for hours long been leaning against him.
Leonora meanwhile looked at him fixedly.
"We understand each other, don't we?" she asked, slowly. "Friends, with
no hope of anything more than that. If you break the pact, you'll not
enter this place again, not even by the second-story window, as you did
last night."
"Yes, friends and nothing more," Rafael murmured with a tone of sincere
sadness, that seemed to move Leonora.
Her green eyes lighted up: her pupils seemed to glitter with spangles of
gold. She stepped nearer and held out her hand.
"You're a good boy; that's the way I like you: resignation and
obedience. For this time, and in reward for your good sense, we'll make
just one exception. Let's not part thus coldly.... So,--you may kiss
me,--as they do it on the stage--here!"
And she raised her hand up toward his lips. Rafael seized it hungrily
and kissed it over and over again, until Leonora, tearing it away with a
violence that showed extraordinary strength, reprimanded him sharply.
"You rogue!... Up to mischief so soon! What an abuse of confidence?
Good-bye! Cupido is calling you.... Good-bye."
And she pushed him toward the balcony, where the barber was already
holding the boat against the railing.
"Hop in, Rafael," said Cupido. "Better lean on me; the water's going
down and the boat's very low," Rafael jumped into his white craft,
which was now dirty and stained from the red water. The barber took the
oars. They began to move away.
"Good-bye! Good-bye! Many thanks!" cried dona Pepa. The maid and the
whole family of the gardener had come out on the balcony.
Rafael let go the tiller, and turned toward the house. He could see
nothing, however, but that proud beauty, who was waving her handkerchief
to them. He watched her for a long time, and when the crests of the
submerged trees hid the balcony from view, he bowed his head, giving
himself up entirely to the silent pleasure of tasting the sweetness that
he could still feel upon his burning lips.
VI
The elections set the whole District agog. The crucial moment for the
House of Brull had come, and all its loyal henchmen, as though still
uncertain of the Party's omnipotence, and fearing the sudden appearance
of hidden enemies, were running this way and that about the city and the
outlying towns, shouting Rafael's name as a clarion call to victory.
The inundation was something of the forgotten past. The beneficent sun
had dried the fields. The orchards fertilized by the silt of the recent
flood looked more beautiful than ever. A magnificent harvest was
forecasted, and, as sole reminders of the catastrophe, there remained
only a shattered enclosure here, a fallen fence there, or some sunken
road with the banks washed away. Most of the damage had been repaired in
a few days, and people were quite content, referring to the past danger
jokingly. Until next time!
Besides, plenty of relief money had been given out. Help had come from
Valencia, from Madrid, from every corner of Spain, thanks to the
whimpering publicity given the inundation in the local press; and since
the pious believer must attribute all his boons to the protection of
some patron saint, the peasants thanked Rafael and his mother for this
alms, resolving to be more faithful than ever to the powerful family.
So--long live the Father of the Poor!
Dona Bernarda's ambitious dreams were on the point of realization, and
she could not give herself a moment's rest. Her son's cool indifference
was something she could not understand for the life of her! The District
was his all right, but was that a reason for falling asleep on the job?
Who could tell what the "enemies of law and order"--there was more than
one of them in the city--might spring at the very last moment? No, he
must wake up--go and make a speech--now at this town, now at that--and
say a few words of encouragement to the people of property, especially.
And why not visit the _alcalde_, down in X---, just to show that poor
devil he was being taken seriously. Rafael must show himself in public,
keep everybody talking about him and thinking about him!
And Rafael obeyed, but taking good care to avoid the company of don
Andres on such trips, in order to spend a few hours at the Blue House on
the way out or back, or else, to cut his engagement altogether and pass
the day with Leonora, trembling to return home lest his mother should
have learned what he had been up to.
Dona Bernarda, in fact, had not been slow in detecting her son's new
friendship. To begin with, her one concern in life was Rafael's health
and conduct. And in that gossipy inquisitive country-town, her son could
do virtually nothing which she did not know all about in the course of a
few hours. An indiscreet remark of Cupido had even brought her to the
bottom of that mysterious and perilous night trip down the flooded
river--not to rescue a "poor family," but to call on that
_comica_--that "chorus girl"--as dona Bernarda called Leonora in a
furious burst of scorn. Stormy scenes occurred that were to leave a
strong undercurrent of bitterness and fear in Rafael's character. Dona
Bernarda's harshness of disposition broke the young man's spirit, making
him realize with what good reason he had always feared his mother. That
uncompromising pietist, with her armorplate of impeccable virtue and
"sound principles" about her, crushed him flat with her very first
words. What in the world was he thinking of? Was he bound to dishonor
the name of Brull? Now after so many, many years of family sacrifice,
was he going to make a fool of himself, and give his enemies a hold on
him, just because of the first ballet-skirt that came along? And in her
rage she did not hesitate to rend the veil of reticence behind which her
conjugal fury and her conjugal unhappiness had run their parallel
courses.
"The same as your father!" dona Bernarda exclaimed. "There's no escaping
blood: a woman-chaser, a friend of low-lives, ready to drive me out of
house and home for the sake of any one of them ... and I, big fool that
I am, work for men like that! Forgetting the salvation of my soul in the
next world to see you get farther along in this than your father did!...
And how do you repay me? Just as he did; with one disappointment, one
irritation, after another!"
Then softening somewhat and feeling the need of imparting her great
plans for the future, she would pass from anger to friendly confidence,
and give Rafael insight into the condition of the family. He was so busy
with Party affairs, and thumbing his big books upstairs, that he did
not know how things were going at home. And he didn't need to know for
that matter: she was there to take care of that. But Rafael must realize
the gaps that had been opened in their fortune by his father's wild
conduct just before he died. She was performing miracles of economy.
Thanks to her efficient administration of affairs, and to the loyal aid
of don Andres, many debts had already been paid off, and she had
redeemed several mortgages. But the burden was a heavy one and it would
still be many years before she could call herself quite free of it.
Besides--and as dona Bernarda came to this part of her talk she grew
tenderer and more insinuating still--he was now the leading man of the
District and so he must be the wealthiest. Now that wouldn't be a
difficult thing to manage. All he had to do was, be a good son, and
follow the advice of his mama, who loved him more than anything else in
the world... A deputy now, and later on, when he came back from Madrid,
marry! There were plenty of good girls around--well brought up, educated
in the fear of the Lord--and millionairesses besides--who would be more
than glad to be his wife.
Rafael smiled faintly at this harangue. He knew whom his mother had in
mind--Remedios, the daughter of the richest man in town--a rustic, the
latter, with more luck than brains, who flooded the English markets with
oranges and made enormous profits, circumventing by instinctive
shrewdness all the commercial combinations made against him.
That was why Rafael's mother was always insistently urging her son to
visit the house of Remedios, inventing all sorts of pretexts to get him
there. Besides, dona Bernarda invited Remedios to the Brull place
frequently, and rarely indeed did Rafael come home of an afternoon
without finding that timid maiden there--a dull, handsomish sort of
girl, dressed up in clothes that did cruel injustice to a peasant beauty
rapidly transformed, by her father's good luck, into a young "society"
girl.
"But, mama," said Rafael, smiling. "I'm not thinking of marriage!... And
when I do, I'll have to consider my own feelings."
After that interview a moral gulf had opened between mother and son. As
a child, Rafael had known his mother to frown and sulk after some
mischievous prank of his. But now, her aggressive, menacing,
uncommunicative glumness was prolonged for days and days.
On returning home at night he would find himself subjected to a
searching cross-examination that would last all during supper. Don
Andres would usually be present, though he did not dare raise his head
when that masterful woman spoke. Where had he been? Whom had he seen?...
Rafael felt himself surrounded by a system of espionage that followed
him wherever he went in the city or in the country.
"No sir, today you were at the chorus-girl's house again!... Take care,
Rafael! Mark my word! You're killing me, you're killing me ...!"
And then those absurd clandestine trips to the Blue House began, the
leading man of the district, the advocate of Alcira's fortunes, creeping
on his stomach, skulking from bush to bush, in order not to be seen by
telltale observers!
Don Andres did his best to console the irate woman. It was just a
passing whim of Rafael's! Boys will be boys! You've got to let them have
a good time now and then! What do you expect with a handsome fellow like
that and from the best family in the region! And the cynical old man,
accustomed to easy conquests in the suburbs, blinked maliciously, taking
it for granted that Rafael had won a complete triumph down at the Blue
House. How else explain the youth's assiduity in his visits there, and
his timid though tenacious rebelliousness against his mother's
authority?
"Such affairs, oh you enjoy them--what's the use! But in the end they
weary a fellow, dona Bernarda," the old man said sententiously. "She'll
be clearing out some fine day. Besides, just let Rafael go to Madrid as
deputy, and see the society there! When he comes back he'll have
forgotten this woman ever existed!"
The faithful lieutenant of the Brulls would have been astonished to know
how little Rafael was progressing with his suit.
Leonora was not the woman that she had shown herself on the night of the
flood. With the fascination of danger gone, the novelty of the
adventure, and the extraordinary circumstances of their second
interview, she treated Rafael with a kindly indifference like any other
of the adorers who had flocked about her in her day. She had come to
look upon him as a new piece of furniture that she found in place in
front of her every afternoon; an automaton, who appeared as regularly as
a clock strikes, to spend hours and hours staring at her, pale,
shrinking with an absurd consciousness of inferiority, and often
answering her questions with stupid phrases that made her laugh.
Her irony and deliberate frankness wounded Rafael cruelly. "Hello,
Rafaelito," she would say sometimes as he came in. "You here again?
Better look out! People will be talking about us before long. Then what
will mama say to you?" And Rafael would be stung to the quick. What a
disgrace, to be tied to a mother's apron-strings, and have to stoop to
all those subterfuges to visit this place without raising a rumpus at
home!
But try as he would, meanwhile, he could not shake off the spell that
Leonora was exercising over him.
Besides, what wonderful afternoons when she deigned to be good!
Sometimes, wearied with walks about the open country, and bored, as
might have been expected of a frivolous, fickle character like hers,
with the monotony of the landscape of orange-trees and palms, she would
take refuge in her parlor, and sit down at the piano! With the hushed
awe of a pious worshipper, Rafael would take a chair in a corner, and
gluing his eyes upon those two majestic shoulders over which curly
tresses fell like golden plumes, he would listen to her rich, sweet,
mellow voice as it blended with the languishing chords of the piano;
while through the open windows the breath of the murmurous orchard made
its way drenched in the golden light of autumn, saturated with the
seasoned perfume of the ripe oranges that peered with faces of fire
through the festoons of leaves.
Shubert, with his moody romances, was her favorite composer. The
melancholy of that sad music had a peculiar fascination for her in her
solitude. Her passionate, tumultuous soul seemed to fall into a
languorous enervation under the fragrance of the orange blossoms. At
times, she would be assailed by sudden recollections of triumphs on the
stage, and on such occasions, setting the piano ringing with the sublime
fury of the Valkyries' Ride, she would begin to shout Brunhilde's
"Hojotojo," the impetuous, savage war-cry of Wotan's daughter--a
melodious scream with which she had brought many an audience to its
feet, and which, in that deserted paradise, made Rafael shudder and
admire, as if the singer were some strange divinity--a blond goddess
with green eyes, wont to charge across the ice-fields through whirlwinds
of driving snow, but who, there, in a land of sunshine, had deigned to
become a simple, an entrancing woman!
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