Читать книгу A Christian Woman - condesa de Emilia Pardo Bazán - Страница 6

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My homesickness did not last as long as I feared. Everybody prefers his natural element, and I did not find mine in the confusion and rollicking ways of the Bohemian boarding-house.

My new abode was in Clavel Street. It was in a suite on the fourth floor, with plenty of sunshine; the rooms there were not so small as those which are usually furnished for six shillings a day. Our landlady was also a native of Biscay, for half of the boarding-house keepers in Spain come from that province. But she was very unlike Pepa Urrutia. She was as neat as wax, and could make most delicious stews of codfish and tomatoes, as well as stewed tripe and vegetable soup, and other savory messes of our national cuisine, and she had no wastefulness apparently; consequently all the boarders had either to settle their bills in due time, or to leave the house. In Doña Jesusa’s abode—we called her Doña because she was middle-aged—the beds were scrupulously clean, though hard and narrow. She kept the maid scrubbing and cleaning all the time. A caged linnet sang merrily in the passageway in front of the kitchen. On Christmas Eve she regaled us with almond pottage and sea-bream, and there was some kind of humble comfort and domestic peace to be enjoyed there. It is true that everything was scrimped and scanty; and, as our rations were so meager, the five or six students of us who usually dined there, ordinarily left the table unsatisfied. I don’t wish to complain of the chocolate, which was pasty stuff of the color of a brick, nor of the leathery corn-cakes, nor of our dessert of apples and pears, which seemed like wax counterfeits to judge by the way we refrained from touching them.

“At least they ought to give us the dessert of raisins and almonds, which they give to criminals condemned to death,” said Luis Portal, a fellow from my province, who was of a humorous vein.

I will not say much about the maccaroni soup, which Luis classified as “alphabetical” or “astronomical,” according as the paste was cut in the shape of letters or of stars; I will not dwell on the wretched pieces of boiled meat, with a bit of bacon hidden behind a pea, and already served out in portions, so that no boarder should take more than his share; nor will I betray the flabbiness of the beef, nor the maggots we used to find in the fish. At my age it is seldom that one bothers himself much about the pleasures of the palate. Besides, on any boarder’s birthday, or on any great holiday, Doña Jesusa would regale us with some rural dish, upon which she had lavished all her skill, and we would then take our revenge. Doña Jesusa always celebrated the principal holidays, and observed them by having an extra dish on the table; so these extraordinary occasions helped us to put up with her usual parsimony—after the manner of the pleasing alternations between want and plenty in our homes.

Luis Portal was the son of a coffee-merchant in Orense, and as he was very ingenious as well as fond of good living, he conceived the idea that we might enjoy a cup of coffee, mornings and afternoons, without great cost. So he purchased a second-hand coffee-pot in the Rastro, which held enough for six cups; he also bought a second-hand coffee-mill, got some of the best coffee, and two pounds of brown sugar; and, when the cost was divided between us, we found that we had the most delicious coffee at a very low price. If we could only afford half a wineglass of champagne or of brandy! But we were brought to a stand-still there. Our means would not reach thus far, for brandy was ruinously expensive. Portal had a bottle in his trunk which he had brought from home, so we made up our minds to make the most of that by taking only one swallow at a time; and we kept to our resolution so well that in two days we drank it all up.

In fact, one could study in Doña Jesusa’s house. It was quiet and orderly, and there were regular hours for everything. Sometimes the landlady would fall to scolding the maid; but this familiar and expected noise did not disturb us at all. So we all ground away to the best of our powers, trying not to have to say “not prepared” when the professors questioned us. The professor, who taught the principles of machinery, used to frighten us a little by his habit of going a-fishing, that is, asking questions out of the regular order.

I have already said that I was not one of the most diligent in my studies, nor was Luis Portal, either. We both used to fall back on general knowledge, letting our wits float easily unburdened by a great load in the memory, because we feared the particular exhaustion which those arid and hard studies cause in weak brains, and which Luis called “The mathematical topsy-turviness.”

On the other hand, two lads who lived with us were so completely worn out that we were afraid that by the time they finished their course—if they ever did finish it—they would be ready for a lunatic asylum. One of them, a Cuban, was gifted with a prodigious memory. With the aid of this inferior but indispensable faculty, which can so deftly cover the weakness of the intellect, he would fairly devour text-books, and as long as it was not necessary to enlarge upon a subject, nor to add a single word to the text, nor take one away, he would come off with flying colors. But the slightest objection, or the gentlest interruption, anything, in fact, which called for the exercise of mind, would crush him; he would get completely addled, and could not give a straight answer to the simplest question.

Portal used to call him the little parrot, and make sport of his serenity and his languid air; and laughed to see him always shivering, even when close to the fire. When he put away his books, the West Indian was like a bird released from his cage. At such times, in place of the mental vigor to handle the heavy iron weights of science skillfully, the poor exile would display the riches of a brilliant imagination, all light and colors; or to be more exact, all spangles and phosphorescent gleams. The commonest phrase, on issuing from his lips, took on a poetic form; he could make rhymes as unconsciously as a mocking-bird sings, and could talk in rhythmical and harmonious verse an hour at a time.

But the sarcastic Portal used to say that the Cuban’s poetry had precisely the same artistic value as the tunes we compose and hum while we are lathering our faces preparatory to shaving, and had as much meaning read from the bottom up as from the top down.

“We’ll call him the mocking-bird instead of parrot,” he would say every time that the Cuban would display for us his poetical string of glass-beads which usually occurred after he had filled himself with coffee.

The other assiduous student came from Zamora; he had a narrow forehead and an obtuse mind. He had neither father nor mother, and the cost of his education was met by his octogenarian and paralyzed grandmother, who used to say: “I don’t want to die until you are a man, and have finished your studies, and can see your future secure.”

It was but a slight thread which bound the poor old woman to this world, and the lad knew it; so he displayed a silent and savage determination. As the Cuban studied with his memory, the Zamoran studied with his will, always kept tense. His poor mental endowments obliged him to work doubly. He neither took nights off on Saturdays nor had holidays on Sundays, nor any excursions whatever. No correspondence with a sweetheart for him; no—nothing but his books, his everlasting books, from morning till night; an equation here and a problem there, without relaxing his assiduity for a single moment, without being absent for a single day, and never saying “not prepared.”

“Have you ever seen such a fellow? He is always on the stretch,” my friend Luis Portal would say; “why, he’ll be a civil engineer before we are, if he does not burst his skin. How thin he is, and his hands are very feverish at times. His breath is very bad; his digestion must surely be out of order. No wonder it is, for he does not take any exercise nor any recreation whatever. Salustiño, it is all right to get ahead, but one must look out for his health!”

I got along well with Luis Portal, and we became fast friends, although our ideas and aspirations were so entirely different. Portal used to like to show himself a sagacious, practical person, or, at least, gave indications that he would be when he arrived at the age when a person’s moral nature becomes well-defined and unified.

We did not differ totally in our views; we had some opinions in common. Portal, like me, was a champion of self-help, and despised restraint or tutelage. He thought that a man should be self-sufficient, and should take advantage of his earlier years, in order to secure freedom or comfort for his manhood.

“We don’t appear like Galicians,” he sometimes used to say, “for we are so energetic in everything.”

I did not agree with him on this point, and bade him remember the adventurous and enterprising spirit the Galicians had displayed within a short time past.

“There’s no doubt about it,” he would say, obstinately, “we are more like Catalans than Galicians, my dear fellow.”

If we were much alike in our ideas of the way to order our lives, we differed greatly in our estimate of the principal aim of life.

Portal used to say:

“Look here, sonny, I am not going to waste my time catching flies nor in trifling pursuits. I’ll try to get money so as to set the world at defiance. It is but a sorry joke to pass one’s life grubbing and in want. My father is an awful miser; he will not shell out a cent, and as yet I know nothing at all about many fine things there are going. I don’t know whether by following my profession I shall ever succeed in obtaining them; I believe that politicians and tradespeople know how to make money better than professional men. It is true the two things are not incompatible, and that Sagasta himself is a civil engineer. Anyway, just let them give me free swing and I shall know how to fix things. If I don’t get rich, put me down for a fool.”

While I applauded his valiant resolution, yet I knew that my dreams of the future differed from his. By “fine things” Portal meant to live well, to drink good wines, to smoke good cigars, and perhaps marry some beautiful, rich girl; while I, without despising all these good things of the earth, did not long for any one of them in particular. I only desired my freedom. I foresaw that with that I might obtain something very noble, and worthy of being tasted and enjoyed; but not in a material or prosaic sense; something like renown, celebrity, passion, adventures, wealth, authority, home, children, travels, combats, even misfortune. At any rate, it would be life—life rich, and worthy of a rational being—who is not content simply to vegetate nor to gloat over pleasures, but who must run over the whole scale of thought, of feeling, and of action. I could not clearly define in what my hopes consisted, but I thought that it would be degrading to lower them to Portal’s material and sensuous level.

Nor did I consider myself a visionary, or an enthusiast, or a dreamer. On the contrary, I knew that if sometimes my head did lift itself toward the clouds, my feet still remained firmly planted on the earth; and that all my actions were those of a man fully determined to make his way in the world, without being distracted by the siren of enthusiasm.

If our creed for the individual had certain points in common, in our creed for the nation, Portal and I utterly disagreed. We were both Republicans; but he belonged to Castelar’s party, was a cautious opportunist, and almost a monarchist by force of concessions; while I was a radical, one of Pi’s followers, and firmly believed that we ought not to carry out a conciliatory policy in Spain, nor accommodate ourselves to old traditions in any respect whatever; but that, on the contrary, we ought to press on resolutely and uncompromisingly in the path of thorough and progressive change.

“These concessions are ruinous and fatal to our country,” I would say, “and by concessions in this case I mean something equivalent to cheating. They say ‘concessions’ so as not to say capitulation or defeat. If our forefathers, those upright men of 1812 to 1840, had accepted a compromise and walked softly about absorbed in thought, a pretty fix we should be in now! It hurts to cut out a cancer, and causes disturbance in the system; but the cancer is destroyed. I can’t understand this mania for compromising with the past, with absolute and fanatic Spain. Your illustrious Chief—for thus we styled Castelar—is a man of the world, fond of making himself agreeable to duchesses and to crowned heads; and that’s what he calls holding to old traditions. Empty words! Fortunately, the French in 1793 did not adopt that method, nor did we in later times. Don’t talk to me. At the rate we are going, within a few years Spain will be crowded with convents again. It is absurd to tolerate such craftiness, and even protect it, as our most liberal government does now. The Jesuits have again spread their net, and every once in a while draw it in a little more. Some day they will catch the whole of us. Of course, when such big bugs as they gain their ends, they don’t care what comes after. ‘After me the deluge,’ as that old scamp, Louis XV., used to say. No well-balanced mind can think that in order to weaken and uproot an institution like Monarchy, you must begin by strengthening and coddling it, and quietly implanting it in the hearts of the people. I don’t swallow that ‘concession’ hook; don’t let them try that business on me.”

Portal would then get excited and answer me with equal energy: “Well, you are simple, to say the least. Those who think as you do are in a fool’s paradise. With your system, we would have an outbreak of the Carlists in the twinkling of an eye, and Spain would be plunged in petty civil war. I don’t like to think, either, what would happen on the establishment of your famous federation. Within two months after the establishment of the Galician canton, there wouldn’t be a rag left. All would want to command, and none to obey. If you begin by wounding and outraging the susceptibilities of a nation, it will surely result in demoralization like that which followed the Revolution of September. Rest assured, Castelar has a long head. It is the republic that is not yet of age, not the king. Let the republic fall of its own weight, like a ripe pear.”

“Try some other dog with that bone. What they all want here is to be chief. Sonny, there are no ideals; all that has collapsed and we must bring them to life, believe me.”

“Don’t spin me great yarns about your ideals,” Portal would reply, getting angry. “Ideals are the cause of all our troubles. There is no other ideal but peace, and to bring order into all this chaos, little by little.”

Another subject of dispute was local government. I was not at all modest in my demands. I wanted the independence of Galicia. In regard to our annexation to Portugal, we might discuss that later. We would see what was most expedient. But it would be well for Portugal, also, to shake off her ancient and fantastic monarchical yoke, and assent to the Iberian Federation.

“I don’t know what I’d give just to see your swinish ideal realized for about twenty-four hours,” Luis would exclaim. “If Galicia should declare itself a canton, not even the evil one would stay there. Make up your mind to one thing: in Spain, the smaller the governing entities—is that the right word?—the worse they are. The central government, as you call it, makes a thousand blunders; but the provincial legislature would make two thousand, the county justices three thousand, and the village authorities a million. Fortunately, to talk about Galician independence is as idle as to ask the fish and the sands what they know about the sea.”

“So you think that the provinces have no right to say, like individuals, ‘each one for himself.’”

“Look here, don’t say anything about their rights. To talk about their rights, is running off on a tangent. By rights and technicalities, I can prove to you that Isabella the Second is to-day the rightful Queen of Spain, and that her grandson is only a usurper. In rational politics no rights nor mummeries exist. There is only what is advantageous or otherwise, what is successful or unsuccessful. There is a sense of smell and of touch, and although I can’t explain to you in what it consists, yet it shows itself in the result. Radical ideas lead on to logical absurdities. You can’t apply algebra to politics. And say no more about independence. Our Spanish nation is an indisputable reality, even if you do not believe it.”

Irritated by his opposition, I would exclaim: “What a musty idea that love of country is! The great thinkers laugh at the idea of patriotism; you can’t deny that.”

“Tell your great thinkers to go think in a stable. If they suppress the springs of action, little by little, because humanity has always progressed, we’ll no longer have any pretext for so much as living. You know that I am not at all sentimental, but our country is like our family, and there’s no need of poetry or sentimentalism to make us love it and defend it with our lives. You think you settle everything by dragging out that about old-fashioned notions. Well, old-fashioned notions are inevitable and necessary and proper. We live on them. And that old idea about our love of country is not the only one bred in our bones. There are a great many others, my dear fellow, which we’ll not give up for twenty centuries. I believe that in this country, in order to foster the ideas which are to replace the old-fashioned ones, what we must do is to be crossed with other races. All of us who are a bit enlightened—why, let us marry foreign wives!”

Sometimes we got to quarreling over these profundities, and would roar at each other while loitering at the table or even while eating. These disputes usually gave us the greatest eagerness in the play of mind on mind; and even in the midst of our hottest arguments we felt drawn toward each other by the conviction that though our opinions were so antagonistic, we were able to understand each other and to spur each other on.

We had come to be inseparable. We helped each other in our studies; we used to go to walk together, even when Luis was going to promenade before the house of a certain outlandish sweetheart he had discovered; we used to sit at the same table in the Levante Café; when we had a little spare cash we would go together to our favorite resort—the gallery in the Teatro Real. All of us students at Doña Jesusa’s were musical; we were all ready to die for “L’Africaine,” and “Les Huguenots,” especially the Cuban, who had a musical craze. His retentive memory would store up not only the music but the words as well, and we used to amuse ourselves on getting home by making him sing over the whole opera.

“Trinidad,” we would say, for that was his name, “Come now, sing the love duet between Vasco and Selika.” “Trinidad, there now, the poniard scene.” “Come, Triny, sing that about O paradiso. Now about Copre fuoco.” “Triny, sing the Protestant psalm. Now, the violins start in—now come the oboe’s notes, when Marcelo appears.” The mocking-bird would sing all we called for, reproducing with astonishing exactness the slightest details of the instrumentation, until at length fairly worn out, he would exclaim, beseechingly:

“Let me go to bed. I see you are making a fool of me.”