Читать книгу Maximina - Armando Palacio Valdés - Страница 6

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Unusual silence reigned in the editorial rooms. Nothing was heard except the scratching of steel pens on paper. The editors were seated around a great table covered with oil-cloth; two or three, however, were writing at small pine tables, set in the corners of the room.

By and by one who had a beard just beginning to turn gray, raised his head, and said:—

"Tell me, Señor de Rivera, was not the motion determined upon for the eighteenth?"

Miguel, who was writing at one of the special tables, replied without lifting his head:—

"Señor Marroquín, I can't advise you too often to be more discreet. Try to realize that all our heads are in danger, from the humblest, like Señor Merelo y García's, up to the most stately and glorious, like our very worthy chief's."

The editors smiled. One of them inquired:—

"And what has become of Merelo? He has not been here at all yet."

"He can't come till twelve," replied Rivera. "From ten till twelve he is always engaged in plotting against institutions in the Café del Siglo."

"I thought that he was in Levante."

"No; he goes there last from two till three."

The first speaker was the very same Señor Marroquín of perpetual memory, Miguel's professor in the Colegio de la Merced, a born enemy of the Supreme Creator and a man as hirsute as a biped can possibly be. This was how he happened to be here:—

One day when Miguel was just finishing his breakfast, word was brought to him that a gentleman was waiting to see him in the library. This gentleman was Marroquín, who in his appearance resembled a beggar; he was so poor, dirty, and disreputable. When he saw his old pupil, he was deeply moved, strange as it may appear, and then told him with genuine eloquence that he had not a shilling, and that he and his children were starving to death, and at the end he begged him to find a place for him on the staff of La Independencia.

"I am not the owner of the journal, my dear Marroquín. The only thing that I can do for you is to give you a letter to General Count de Ríos."

He gave him the letter, and Marroquín presented himself with it at the general's house; but he had the ill fortune to go at a most inopportune moment when the general was raging up and down through the corridors of his house, like one possessed, and calling up the repertoire of objurgations for which he had been so distinguished when he was a sergeant.

The reason was that one of his little ones had drunk up a bottle of ink, under the impression that it was Valdepeñas. Whether oaths and invectives have any decisive influence upon events or not, we are unable to state; but the general used them with as much faith as though they had been a powerful antidote.

The victim was leaning his poor little head against the partition, shedding a copious flood of tears.

"What have you brought?" roared the count, casting a wrathful look upon Marroquín.

"This letter," replied the poor man, offering it with trembling hand.

"Vomit!" roared the general, with flaming eyes.

"What?" asked the professor, timidly.

"Vomit, child, vomit! or I will shake you out of your skin!" bellowed the illustrious chief of Torrelodones, seizing his son by the neck.... "And what does the letter say?"

"It is from Señor Rivera, asking a position on La Independencia for one who admires you."

"Can't you? Then put your fingers in your mouth!.... Señor Rivera knows perfectly well that there is no position vacant; everything is full, and I am tormented to death with applications.... Let me see you stuff your fingers in, you little rascal, or I will do it myself!"

Marroquín acted prudently, by quietly opening the door and slipping out. Afterward Miguel spoke to the general at a more propitious moment and succeeded in getting Marroquín a place on the staff at a monthly salary of five hundred reales.[11]

Among the other editors of La Independencia was an apostate and liberal priest who had let his beard grow long, and used to tell his friends secrets of the confessional when he had been drinking. He was one of Marroquín's intimates: both had the same grudge against the Divinity, and both were working enthusiastically to free humanity from its yoke. Nevertheless, one day he actually became ready to quarrel with the hirsute professor for turning the Eucharist into ridicule, which confirmed the former in his idea that "the priest was changing his views."

His name was Don Cayetano.

One other of the editors was a light-haired, handsome, and bashful young man, whose seat was in one of the corners of the room, and he lifted his head only when he overheard some brilliant sentence, for such things aroused his frantic admiration. His articles were always a mosaic of sonorous, titillating euphemisms, and adjectives, which formed a large proportion of Gómez de la Floresta's repertory: he played with them like a juggler; if any one desired to make him happy, he could find no easier way than by inventing some metaphor or making use of some harmonious adjective. Rivera, who knew this weakness of his, used to indulge him in it.

"This afternoon, gentlemen, I saw a woman whose glance was as bright as a Damascus blade."

Gómez de la Floresta's face would flush with pleasure, and he would look up with a smile of congratulation:—

"That means that it was a cold and cutting glance!"

"Her skin was smooth and brilliant with marble lines; her hair fell like a golden cataract upon her swan-like neck, which was bound around with a diamond necklace, brilliant as drops of light...."

"Drops of light! How felicitous that is, Rivera! how felicitous!"

"She was a woman capable of making life Oriental for a time."

"That is it! Taking refuge with her in a minaret, breathing the perfumes of Persia, letting her pearly fingers caress our locks, drinking from her mouth the nectar of delight!"

"I am delighted, Señor de Floresta, to see that you are consistent. Let us put a stop to it, nevertheless. You have been having an attack of phrases on the brain, and I fear a fatal termination."

The editor smiled in mortification and went on with his work.

A slender young man, with prominent cheek bones, almond-shaped eyes, and awkward gait, came in, making a great confusion, and humming a few strains of a waltz; he went up to the table where Miguel was writing, and giving him a slap on the shoulder, said, with a jolly tone:—

"Holá, friend Rivera!"

Miguel, without looking up, replied very solemnly:—

"Gently, gently, Señor Merelo! gently, we are not all on a level!"

The editors roared with laughter.

Merelo, a little touched, exclaimed:—

"This Rivera is always making jokes.... Now, señor, ..." he went on to say, flinging his sombrero on the table.... "I have just this moment come from the tariff meeting at the Teatro del Circo...."

"Who spoke?... Who spoke?" was asked from various parts of the room.

"Well, Don Gabriel Rodríguez, Moret y Prendergast, Figuerola, and our chief; but the one who made the best speech was Don Felix Bona."

"Man alive! and what did he say?"

"Well, he began by saying that he ... the most insignificant of all that were there...."

"Señor Merelo! and is it possible that you did not protest against such a statement?" asked Miguel from his table.

Merelo looked at him without seeing the force of his remark; but finally feeling the hidden prick of sarcasm, he made up a disgusted face and went on, affecting to scorn it:—

" ... That he had come there to speak in the name of Commerce at least...."

"But, friend Merelo," interrupted the ex-curate, who greatly delighted in poking fun at the reporter, ... "you surely ought to have protested against his claim to humility."

Merelo could to a certain point put up with Rivera's raillery, since he recognized his superiority, but the priest's went against his nerves. And so, full of wrath, he put his hands together after the manner of priests during mass, and intoned:—

"Dominus vobiscum!"

A general laugh went round among the editors. The curé flushed up to his ears, and, greatly disgusted, tried to shoot the same jest again, only winging it with a sharper point; but the reporter, who was not remarkable for his ingenuity, kept replying:—

"Dominus vobiscum!" And his intonation was so comical and clerical that the newspaper men had to hold their sides with laughter.

The priest finally became so irritated that instead of jests he actually heaped insults on him. One of them was so outrageous and shameful that the latter felt called upon to raise his hand and give the priest a tremendous slap.

A scene of confusion and tumult arose in the office, lasting several moments. A number of men laid hold of Don Cayetano, who, with the exchange scissors in his hand, declared in an angry voice his intention of ripping Merelo open.

The latter, who did not care a rap for such a threat, roared to his companions to let him go: he would not put up with such blackguard language from any one. But his friends knew well that this was sheer rhetoric, and they clung to him all the more watchfully.

At last they succeeded in calming down the angry disputants, and the storm was followed by a calm that lasted for a quarter of an hour, during which all silently gave themselves up to their writing. At last Miguel looked up and asked:—

"See here, Señor Merelo, when do you expect to go to Rome?"

"To Rome?... What for?"

"To obtain pardon for the sin of having laid hands on a sacred person. You can't get absolution here."

A new shout of laughter ran through the office. The priest, in a fury, flung down his pen, took his hat, and left the room.

The editors of La Independencia lost much time in such skirmishes of wit, and our friend Rivera was almost always at the bottom of them.

Beside the men already mentioned, there were three or four of less distinction, and a throng of occasional contributors who came anxiously every night to bring the editor-in-chief their offering of articles, which, for the most part, were rejected.

Among all these, most attention was attracted by a young man, not as yet regularly attached to the staff, hideous, rickety, but well dressed, who was accustomed to write papers on literary criticism, always signed with the pseudonym Rosa de té, or Tea Rose. He was very severe on authors, and always felt it his duty to give them sound advice about the art which they practised. Time and again he assured them that this thing was not human, that was not like life, and the other was not in good form. He had a great deal to say about life, which, in his opinion, no author knew anything about, nor about women either. Only Rosa de té had a correct notion of the world and of woman's heart.

From the very beginning of his criticisms, he endeavored to put the author in the prisoner's box, while he himself mounted the judge's bench, wherefrom he would ask questions, administer blame, lay down the law, and make sarcastic and humorous flings.

"Where did Don Fulano[12] ever know of a young girl exclaiming, 'ah!' when she had the tooth-ache?... It is evident that Don Fulano has not often set foot in the salons of the aristocracy!... Life, Don Fulano, is not as you paint it; it is necessary to have lived within the charmed circle of society if one aspire to give a correct picture of it.... What we fail to find in Don Fulano's work is the plot.... And the plot, Don Fulano, the plot?... What kind of a character is the hero of his work? In one chapter he says that he has a tremendous appetite, and liked nothing better than to eat a box of Nantes sardines, and a few chapters further on he declares that he detests sardines! What kind of logic is that? Characters in art must be clearly defined, logical, not a patchwork. Don Fulano's protagonista here alone in the course of the work, according to our count, makes nineteen resolutions. Does Don Fulano think that nineteen resolutions are sufficient for a hero? Our opinion would be that it was not enough for even a subordinate character.... And so there is no way of preventing the character from being bungling, colorless, lacking in life and energy. Energy in the characters of novels and dramas I cannot weary of recommending to our authors.... Besides, you ought to endeavor, Don Fulano, to be more original. That remark made by Richard to the countess in the sixth chapter, where he says, ... 'Señora, I shall never again set foot in this house,' we have read before in Walter Scott."

This young man had greatly pleased Miguel, who always called him the priest (sacerdote), because he had many times in his articles made use of the expression "the priesthood of criticism."

Rosa de té, so bold and scornful in his treatment of poets and novelists, was a very Job in the patience with which he bore the raillery of Miguel and the other editors.

One day, however, he had the misfortune to write a biting review of a poet who was one of Rivera's friends. Rivera was angry, and called him an ignoramus and a stupid lout to his face, and the poor Rosa could not get up to defend himself. When Mendoza came, Miguel, still vexed, said to him:—

"Now, see here, Perico, why do you allow this stupid baby to write literary reviews, and all the time make the paper ridiculous?"

Mendoza, as usual, made no answer. But Miguel insisted.

"I want you to explain to me why it is...."

"We don't have to pay anything for his articles," replied the other, in a low voice.

"Then they are very dear!"

Although Miguel did not care much for politics, he worked diligently on the paper. The revolutionary atmosphere had sufficiently condensed itself, and no young man could escape its feverish and disturbing influence.

The Conde de Ríos was at last banished to the Balearic Islands. Mendoza suddenly disappeared from Madrid, leaving a letter to his friend Miguel, telling him that he had made his escape because he had been informed that the police were going to arrest him, and asking him to take charge of the paper.

Such a letter as that caused the brigadier's son no little amusement, because he was convinced that the administration had no thought of troubling the poor Brutandor.

Nevertheless, he actually took the chief editorship of La Independencia, the nominal direction of it being, as always in such calamitous times of persecution, under the name of a silent partner.

And, in order satisfactorily to fulfil his trust, he began to attend the so-called círculos políticos, and above all the committee-room of the Congress of Deputies, which was then, is now, and ever will be, probably, the workshop where the happiness of the country is devised. So when he went there for the first time, he could not overcome a feeling of respect and veneration.

At the sight of the stir and agitation which reigned there, our hero could not help comparing that chamber and the corridors around it to a great factory.

A host of laborers, in high hats, were going and coming, entering and bowing, and elbowing each other; their faces bore the imprint of the deep cares that agitated them. Some were sitting in front of desks and feverishly writing letters and more letters; from time to time they would pass their hands over their foreheads and draw a sigh of weariness, and, perhaps, of pain at finding themselves obliged, on the altars of the country's interest, to deny a meeting with some influential elector who did not deserve such treatment.

Others would come out of the chamber of sessions and sit down on a sofa to think over the speech which they had just heard, or would join some group of members warmly discussing some question which, owing to a modesty that did them honor, they had not cared to take part in during the session.

Others would cluster around the entrance and anxiously wait for some minister to pass, so as to recommend to his attention some matter of general interest to his family.

All this reminded Miguel of the bustle, the noise, and the tremendous activity that he had witnessed in an iron foundry at Vizcaya. There as well as here men were moving in opposite directions, each one attending to his task; they were a little less respectably dressed, and their necks and breasts were somewhat more tanned than was the case with the representatives of their country; but this was because there was rather more heat in the foundry than in the salón de conferencias. In place of letters and other documents, the men there were lugging bars of red-hot iron in their hands, and they passed them on from one to the other just as the deputies passed on their papers.

It must not be supposed that it was cool in the salón de conferencias. In each one of its four angles there was a great fireplace where were burning ancient and well-dried logs, which the thoughtful country provides her representatives lest they should freeze. Besides, there are furnaces in the cellar which send up columns of hot air through the open registers; the carpets, the curtains, the ventilators, and the screens also cause the temperature to be neither cold nor hot beyond endurance.

Unquestionably the system of heating is better understood in the salón de conferencias than in the foundry at Vizcaya.

Along its walls are large and comfortable sofas where the deputies and the newspaper men, who help them in the laborious task of saving the country, can rest for a few moments. And if they wish to refresh or restore their failing strength, there is, also, a lunch-room where the nation furnishes its managers, gratis, with water and azucarillos[13] in great abundance, and where, for a moderate price, they can get ham, turkey, pies, sherry, and Manzanilla, and other foods and drinks.

Intelligent and zealous waiters, as soon as they come in, relieve them of their overcoats, which they guard with care, and return after they have lunched, lest in any way they should catch cold.

Miguel was greatly impressed, when he first attended a meeting of the Congress, by the humility and deep respect shown by a waiter taking a fur overcoat from a gentleman with a long white goatee, who allowed him to do so, with a solemn and peevish expression, moving his head from one side to the other as though he could not hold it up with the weight of thoughts that filled it.

Afterwards he chanced to see this same gentleman in the lunch-room, taking a few slices of scalloped tongue; he had the same thoughtful, reserved, imposing air.

He was glad to know that his name was Señor Tarabilla, who had been governor of several of the provinces, superior honorary chief of the civil administration, and the holder of various other distinguished offices in Madrid and elsewhere. He had also been secretary of the committee of acts in the Congress, where once he had draughted a private bill which had never reached discussion.

Our hero enjoyed one of the purest satisfactions of his life in becoming acquainted with a personage of so great importance in politics, and he made up his mind to go on and gradually know them all in the same way. He used to go round from group to group, listening attentively to the discussions that were taking place among the most distinguished leaders of men. It was his duty to acquaint himself with their opinions and plans, so as to conduct his journal dexterously. He was surprised by some of these private debates, but especially at one which he overheard a few days after he entered the salón de conferencias.

In the centre of a large and crowded group there was a lively discussion going on between a minister and one of the leaders of the opposition concerning a certain article in the constitution of 1845, in which punishment by property confiscation is prohibited.

The minister held that this prohibition was not absolute; that in the article were shown the causes for which a citizen could be deprived of his property. The leader of the opposition screamed like one possessed, arguing that such was not the case; that there were no such causes, and no such things. Both grew very red in the face, and almost reached the point of getting actually angry with each other. Finally the minister asked energetically:—

"Now we will see, Señor M——; have you ever read the constitution of 1845?"

"No, sir, I have not read it, nor have I any desire to!" said Señor M——, in fury.... "Have you read it yourself?"

"No; but though I have not read it," replied the minister, putting on a bold face, "I know that in the first section are indicated the causes which permit confiscation.... And if I have not, here is Señor R——, who was a minister at that time, and can tell us."

Señor R—— was an old gentleman, smoothly shaven; and when he heard his name called, and perceived that all eyes were turned upon him, with a smile that was half malicious and half abashed, he said:—

"The truth of the matter is that I myself cannot remember having read it through!"

At first these discussions and his constantly growing acquaintance with the great engine of politics entranced him; but afterwards, when he came to know by sight, and even have the honor of a personal acquaintance with almost all of the grandees of the kingdom, and had learned from their lips not a few of the secrets of governing nations, he had the sentiment to comprehend that he was beginning to weary of it all; most evenings he preferred to take a book of Shakspere, Goethe, Hegel, or Spinoza, and sit down by his wife's side, and read while she sewed or did her embroidery, rather than wander up and down the corridors of Congress, and listen to the dissertations of Señor Tarabilla and other distinguished men.

And I say that it was sentiment that taught him this; because an inner voice whispered to him that this was not the way to attain fortune and celebrity, nay, he should try to imitate step by step the career of Señor Tarabilla; but though that was the better course, he nevertheless determined to follow the worse, because human nature is weak, and often hurled to destruction by its passions. Even on those afternoons when he deigned to go up to the Congress, instead of joining the groups, taking up with the deputies, flattering the ministers, and offering his opinions in regard to whatever question might arise, letting himself be carried away by melancholy (perhaps by the longing for his wife's company, his armchair, or his Shakspere), he would go and sit down alone on some sofa, and there give himself up to his thoughts or his dreams, and try to delude himself into the idea that he was fulfilling his duty.

He would look with distracted eyes at the throng of deputies, journalists and politicians tagging at their heels, and their feverish activity, their agitation, and their eagerness had not the slightest power to inspire the lazy fellow with the noble desire of laboring for his country, and contributing in some way to its happiness.

At times, not having anything to think about, he would amuse himself in seeking for resemblances between the men whom he saw and those whom he had known before. His attention was particularly attracted by a deputy, a custom-house director, who bore the closest resemblance to a certain fisherman of Rodillero, named Talín. He had known Talín under particularly sad circumstances. One of his sons had died of measles, and he had not a shilling in the house with which to bury him; the poor man had to carry him in his arms to the cemetery, and dig the grave himself. A few months afterward Talín was lost in a famous gale which has figured in more than one novel. And how closely this deputy resembled Talín! They were as like as two eggs.

There was another whose face was decorated with big scars and cicatrices, and whose eyebrows and eyelashes had been lost by reason of some secret malady which obliged him to go every year to Archena; this man struck him as particularly like a poor miner whom he had known at Langreo. The latter worked in the galleries of the mines, spending the livelong day in a narrow hole which he himself had laboriously to excavate. One day the gas took fire and burned his face and hands horribly. After that he was obliged to beg.

When he was weary of these exercises of imagination, he would call Merelo y García, and make him sit by his side, and delight in hearing him relate with characteristic vehemence all the gossip from behind the scenes, if it is not irreverent to compare the lobbies of Congress with the flies of a theatre.

Merelo was at that time the phoenix of Madrid noticieros and the envy of the other newspaper proprietors, who had more than once made him overtures of increased salary to get him away from the Conde de Ríos; but Merelo, with fidelity that could not be too highly praised (and therefore he did not cease to praise it), had remained firm in his resistance to all temptations.

There was no one his equal in covering in a moment a dozen groups, in finding out what they were talking about, what they had been talking about, and what they were going to talk about, in gliding between the deputies' feet and discovering the most inviolate and carefully guarded secrets of politics, in worrying foreign envoys with questions; audaciously approaching the ministers, in tormenting the subordinates, and in "cutting out of every one whatever he had in his body," sometimes by suavity, at others by force.

Really Merelo y García was in Spain the pioneer of that pleiad of young reporters who, at the present day, make our press so illustrious; he it was who draughted the first lineaments of bills in the forms of questions and answers, though they afterward appeared so much changed. Still, in Merelo's time, they were as yet, as it were, in swaddling clothes, and Chinese and Moorish ambassadors did not answer in such a precise and categorical manner as they do now, when the reporters ask them, for example "How long were you on your journey? Were you able to get any sleep?" etc., etc.

Merelo was thus better known than the postman in all official centres and more feared than the cholera. When he made up his mind to find out about anything, neither sour faces nor rude replies could daunt him; he was proof against all rebuffs. It was told of him that one time when the Minister of State had just come out from a very important diplomatic meeting, Merelo met him with the question:—

"How now, Señor F——? is the matter of the treaty settled or not?"

The minister looked at him with curiosity, and asked:—

"What journal are you editor of?"

"Of La Independencia," replied Merelo, with a genial smile.

"I might have known it by the impudence which you show," retorted the minister coolly, turning on his heel.

The General Count de Ríos used to tell at his receptions, with the tears of delight, of one famous exploit which Merelo's especial gifts had allowed him to accomplish.

He was at his favorite post of observation, like a watch-dog, at one of the doors of the salón de conferencias; he had been for some time on the scent for news, when he happened to see a page carry a telegram to the President of the Council of Ministers. The President opened it, read it carefully, and crumpled it in his hands with a frown, and then walked along with slow step to the lobby. Merelo was all alive, and followed him with ears alert, with eager eyes, and quivering nostrils. The President went to the wash-room. Merelo waited patiently. The President came out. Then Merelo's brain underwent a sudden and terrible revolution; he hesitated a moment whether or not to follow him back; but at that instant he was inspired by one of those thoughts that illuminate the records of journalism; instead of following his quarry, he darted like a flash into the wash-room, looked, and hunted, and hunted.... At last, in an obscure spot, he found a bit of crumpled blue paper. He had no hesitation in pulling it out.

That evening La Independencia printed the following:—

"It seems that the preconization of the bishop-elect of Malaga, Señor N——, first cousin of the President of the Council of Ministers, meets with opposition in Rome."

The President read this notice as he was going to bed, and he was greatly surprised, as he afterwards confessed to his friends, because the report of the Pope's opposition to his cousin's confirmation had been telegraphed to him by the ambassador. Racking his memory, he recalled the fact that that afternoon, after reading the telegram, he had been followed along the lobby of Congress by a shadow, and that the shadow was waiting when he had come out of the wash-room. The President instantly guessed how the cat was let out of the bag, and burst into a roar of laughter. "That was a good joke," he exclaimed, as he put out the light.