Читать книгу The Temptress (La tierra de todos) - Vicente Blasco Ibáñez - Страница 4

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AS usual the Marquis de Torre Bianca got up late. Leaving the security of his bedroom, he cast an uneasy glance at the letters and newspapers waiting for him on a silver salver in the library. Some of the postmarks were foreign. At sight of these he breathed a sigh of relief. That much respite at least.... But some of the letters were from Paris; and at these he frowned. He knew what they would be like. They would be long and full of unpleasant allusions, to say nothing of reproaches and threats.... He noted uncomfortably the addresses printed on some of the envelopes, and at their names, his creditors appeared before him, an indignant and vociferous crowd.... Alas! He knew what was in those letters.

If they had only been addressed to his wife! She received letters like that with the utmost serenity, as though debts and clamorous creditors were her native element—“The Fair Elena” her friends called her, acknowledging a beauty which couldn’t be denied, but which her women friends liked to allude to as “historic”—it had lasted so long. The Marquis, however, had a more antiquated conception of honor than the historically fair Elena. He went so far as to believe that it is better not to contract debts if there is no possibility of paying them.

Fearful lest the servant should find him still dubiously eyeing his mail, the Marquis began opening his letters.... After all, they were not so bad! One was from the firm which had sold the Marquise her most recently acquired automobile. Of the ten installments to be paid, it had collected only two.... And there were numerous other letters from shops that supplied the Marquise with her needs. From her establishment near the Place Vendome her debts had reached out and permeated the neighborhood. The maintenance, to say nothing of the comfort, of the establishment, necessitated the services of innumerable tradespeople.

The servants had just as good a reason to write him letters as the tradespeople. But instead they relied upon the worldly arts of the Marquise to provide them with a means of compensating themselves for long unpaid services. So they expressed their disgust by a reluctant and unbending attitude in the discharge of their duties.

The Marquis was wont, when he had finished the perusal of his morning mail, to look about him with something very like alarm. There was his Elena, giving parties and going to all the most distinguished festivities in Paris; occupying the most desirable apartment of an elegant house on a fashionable street, keeping a luxurious automobile, and never less than five servants. By what mysterious adjustments and manoeuvres could his wife and he keep up this manner of life? Every day there were new debts; every day they required more money for perpetually increasing expenses. Whatever funds he had disappeared like a river in the sand. And yet Elena seemed to consider this manner of living reasonable and proper, just as though it were that of all her friends....

At this point the Marquis caught sight of a letter he had overlooked, a letter bearing an Italian postmark.

“From Mother,” he said.

As he read it his expression lightened. He even smiled. Yet this letter too had complaints to make. But they were gentle, resigned.

The echoes of his mother’s voice, awakened in his memory by her words, called up before him the old white palace of the Torre Biancas, one of the monuments of his distant Tuscany. Huge, in ruins now, surrounded by gardens of the past, with vast halls whose floors were tiled, and whose ceilings were gay with paintings of mythological scenes, it had long contained a wealth of famous paintings that hung on its bare walls, marking out their squares and rectangles in the dust gathering for centuries on the slowly crumbling plaster.

But the pictures and the priceless bits of statuary had already vanished from their places when the Marquis’ father took possession of his ancestral halls. His only resource for an income lay in the archives of the Torre Biancas. Autographs of Machiavelli, Michelangelo, and other Florentines who had had correspondence with his ancestors, paid the expenses of one generation....

Around the palace the gardens of three centuries stretched out their marble steps, and balustrades crumbling under the weight of matted rose vines, to the Tuscan sun. Mosses and vines crept into the cracks of the stone, tracing out their patterns with supreme indifference to the decay their presence caused. On the driveways the ancient box, cut back to form wide walls and deep triumphal arches, looked as black as the ruins of a burnt city. It was so long now since the gardens had received any care that they were beginning to look like a flowering forest. The paths at the step of infrequent visitors sent out melancholy echoes which startled the birds like the shot of an arrow, disturbed swarms of insects floating under the outspreading branches, startled the little snakes crawling among the tree trunks.

Wearing the clothes of a simple peasant, and served only by a little country girl, the Marquis’ mother lived alone in these vast halls and gardens, accompanied by thoughts of her son, preoccupied with the problem he presented. How was she to provide money for him?

The only visitors at the palace were dealers in antiques to whom she sold one by one the remnants of a splendor already pillaged by those who had preceded her at Torre Bianca. But she must send several thousand lire to that last member of the noble line, who was playing a part worthy of his title in London, Paris, and all the great cities of the world. And convinced that fortune, so mindful of the first Torre Biancas, would finally remember her son, she reduced her own needs to the barest necessities, ate peasant’s food served to her on a rough pine table, in one of those marble rooms in which nothing now remained that could be sold.

Touched, as always, by her letter, the Marquis was murmuring softly to himself, “Mother! Mother!” He read again—

“I didn’t know what to do, Federico, after sending you the money you last received from me. If you could see the house in which you were born, my son, I wonder what you would say? No one will offer me more than a twentieth part of its value. But, until some foreigner who really wants to buy it comes along, I am willing to sell the floors, and even those wonderful old ceilings, the only things left now that have any market value. Anything to get you out of your difficulties, to prevent the slightest reproach from attaching to your name. I can live on very little, perhaps even less than I allow myself now. But isn’t it at the same time possible for you and Elena to reduce your expenses a little without Elena’s giving up in any way the position that being your wife entitles her to? Your wife is rich! Can’t she help you to keep up your establishment?”

The Marquis paused. The simple way in which his mother expressed her anxieties hurt him; and her illusions about Elena stabbed him like remorse. She believed Elena to be rich! She believed that he could induce his wife to live economically and simply ... hadn’t he tried to at the beginning of their marriage ...?

Elena’s arrival cut short his reflections. It was already past eleven, and she was going out to take her daily drive in the Bois. She liked to begin the day with this open air review of her acquaintances.

The somewhat ostentatious elegance of her dress suited her kind of beauty. Although between thirty and forty, frequent fasts and eternal vigilance still preserved her slenderness, which was enhanced by her height; and the care she took of her person kept her in what might be called that “third youth” which the women of our great modern cities enjoy.

It was only when she was absent that Torre Bianca was aware of her faults. As soon as she stepped into the room, his admiration of her took complete possession of him, making him accede blindly to whatever she might ask.

She greeted him now with a smile, to which he responded. Putting her arms about his shoulders she kissed him, and began talking to him with a childish lisp, which, well he knew, presaged a request. And yet this trick of hers had never lost its power to stir him, subduing his will.

“Good morning, Bunny! I got up so late this morning, and I have a thousand things to do before going out, but I couldn’t go without seeing my darling little Rabbit.... Give me another kiss, and I’m off!”

Smiling humbly, with an air of submissive gratitude like that of a faithful dog, the Marquis allowed himself to be petted. Elena finally tore herself away, but before she had quite reached the library door she suddenly remembered something important and stopped short.

“Have you some money?”

The Marquis’ smile vanished. His eyes put the question:

“How much do you want?”

“Oh, not so much. About eight thousand francs.”

Elena’s tailor, one on the Rue de la Paix, needless to say, had suddenly stopped being as respectful as Elena thought he should be—his bill was only three years old!—and he had threatened court proceedings.

At her husband’s gesture when she mentioned this sum, Elena’s childlike smile vanished; but she still used her little girl’s lisp to complain.

“You say that you love me, Federico, and you refuse to give me this little bit of money....”

“There are some of the letters and claims of our creditors....” The Marquis pointed to the heap on the table.

Elena smiled once more, but this time there was something cruel about the curl of her lips.

“I can show you a great many documents as interesting as those. But you are a man, and men are supposed to provide money in their homes so that their wives needn’t suffer.... How am I to pay my debts if you don’t help me?”

He looked at her with something like fear in his eyes.

“I have given you such a lot of money! But everything that falls into your hands vanishes like smoke.”

Elena’s voice was hard as she replied:

“You aren’t going to pretend that a woman of my position, or of my appearance—since people will mention it—should live in a shabby sort of way? When a man’s vanity gets so much satisfaction out of having a wife like me, he ought to bring home money by the million.”

It was the Marquis’s turn to be offended, and Elena, aware of the effect of her words, suddenly changed her manner, smiled, and came close enough to be able to put her hands on Federico’s shoulders.

“Why don’t you write to the old lady, Federico? Perhaps she can send us some money, she can sell an heirloom or something....”

The tone of these words only added to her husband’s irritation.

“The person you mention is my mother, and I wish you would speak of her as such. As to money, she can’t send us any more.”

Elena looked at her husband with a certain contempt, saying at the same time, as though to herself:

“This will teach me to fall in love with paupers.... Well, if you can’t get me this money, I’ll get it!”

As she spoke an expression so significant flickered over her face that her husband sprang from his chair.

“You had better explain what you mean,” he began, frowning. But he could not go on. The Marquise’s expression had completely changed. She broke out into bursts of childish laughter, and clapped her hands.

“At last, my Bunny is really angry. And he thought his wife meant something bad.... But don’t you know that I love no one but you? Really, no one else....”

She caught him by the arm, and kissed him repeatedly, in spite of his attempts to make her stop her caresses. And he ended by yielding to them and assuming once more his humble suitor attitude.

Elena was warning him now with upraised finger.

“Come, smile a little, don’t be naughty.... But isn’t there really any money? Do you mean it?”

The Marquis shook his head. Then he looked ashamed of his powerlessness.

“But I love you just as much,” she said. “Let the old debts wait! I’ll find a way out—I have before.... Good-bye Federico!”

And she walked backwards towards the door, throwing him kisses; but once on the other side of the hangings her expression of youthful lightheartedness vanished. Her lips were twisted with scorn and a look of frantic ferocity glittered in her eyes.

Her husband too, when he was alone, lost the momentary happiness Elena’s caresses had afforded him. There lay those letters, and his mother’s appeal.... He sat at the table, his face in his hands. All his anxieties had swooped down upon him, he could scarcely breathe in the thick swarm.

Always, at such moments, Torre Bianca called up memories of his youth as though they could offer him a remedy for present troubles. The happiest time in his life had been that period when he had been a student in the Engineering School at Lièges. Eager to restore the fallen splendor of his house, he had thrown himself into his preparations for a modern career, in order to set out on the conquest of money, just as his remote ancestors had done. Before royalty had bestowed a title upon them, they had been Florentine merchants, like the Medicis, travelling even to the Orient in their pursuit of fortune. Federico de Torre Bianca wanted to be an engineer for the same reason that all the other youths of his generation did, in order to make Italy, once famous for her art, an important modern nation because of her industries.

As he recalled his student life the first image that arose was that of Manuel Robledo, his friend and classmate. Manuel was a Spanish youth whose frank and happy disposition made it possible for him to meet daily problems with quiet energy. For several years he had played the part of older brother to the distinguished young Italian, and Torre Bianca never failed to think of his friend in difficult moments.

He was such a good fellow! Not even his successive love affairs could destroy his serenity. He had the poise of a mature man, perhaps because the important interests of his life were good eating and the guitar....

Torre Bianca, who was endowed with a fatal facility for falling in love, went about in those days with one of the pretty girls of Liège, and Robledo, out of good fellowship, feigned an absorbing interest in one of her friends. As a matter of fact he was always much more attentive to the culinary activities of their parties than to the not very insistent claims of sentiment.

Yet Bianca had come to discern through this somewhat noisy and unquestionably materialistic joviality of his friend a certain leaning towards the romantic which Robledo tried manfully to hide, as though it were a shameful weakness. Perhaps, in his country, there had been some experience.... So often, at night, the Italian boy, stretched on his dormitory bed, heard the guitar softly moaning as Robledo hummed the lovesongs of his far-away homeland.... Their course over, the friends had parted, expecting to meet as usual the following year; but that meeting had never occurred. While Torre Bianca remained in Europe, Robledo roved about through South America, for the most part in his capacity as engineer, but now and then he went through an extraordinary transformation, as though his Spanish blood made it imperative that some of the old Conquistadores should live in him once more.

At rare intervals he wrote to Torre, but his letters contained more illusions to the past than to the present. Yet somehow, in spite of his discreet reticence, Torre Bianca gathered that his chum had become a general in one of the small republics of Central America.

It was two years now since he had heard from Robledo, whose last letter announced that he was employed in Argentine, having had enough, for the time being, of those countries still continually shaken by revolution. He was contracting for the government as well as for private undertakings, and constructing canals and railroads; and through all the discomforts of the rough life he led, the belief that he was helping the advance guard of civilization to cross one of the earth’s desert places, gave him intimate satisfaction and happiness.

Torre had among his papers a photograph of his friend in which Robledo appeared on horseback, wearing an African helmet and a poncho that fell over his shoulders. Several half-breeds were planting linesman’s flags on the mesa which, for the first time since creation, was to receive the imprint of material civilization. Robledo, who was of the same age as himself, must have been thirty-seven when the photograph was taken; yet he looked many years younger than Torre Bianca did at forty.

His life of adventure had not let him grow old. Although he was heavier than in his student days, the smooth face that smiled serenely out of the photograph indicated perfect physical condition.

Torre Bianca, on the other hand, was of a much slighter build, and thanks to his fondness for sports, and especially fencing, he preserved a more than youthful agility. But his face was lined and drawn. There were furrows between his eyebrows, and the hair above his temples was already streaked with white, while the corners of his mouth, but slightly hidden by a short mustache, drooped with what might be lassitude, or what might be weakness of will. And Torre Bianca, struck by Robledo’s physical robustness, was encouraged by his photograph to go on thinking of him as competent to guide and help him, just as he had done in the early days....

As he thought of his friend that morning in the midst of his anxieties, he said to himself:

“I wish I had him here! His strong man’s strong will would strengthen mine....”

The butler interrupted his meditation. A caller ... but he would not give his name.... Torre Bianca made a determined effort to conceal his nervous dread from the servant. Was it perhaps one of his wife’s creditors trying by this means to reach him?

“He seems a foreigner, sir. He says he’s a relative....”

The Marquis had a presentiment, but he smiled at it. It was absurd.... Yet it would be like Robledo to turn up in this fashion, as if he were a character in a play, coming in just when the action requires his appearance. But how unlikely that Robledo, who when last heard from was in another hemisphere, should be on hand to take up his cue like an actor waiting in the wings! No, life doesn’t provide such neat coincidences ... only books....

He would not see his caller, he told the servant in no uncertain terms. At that moment some one lifted the door-hangings and to the butler’s consternation stepped into the room. The caller had grown tired of waiting.

The Marquis, who was easily roused, went threateningly towards the intruder. His arms outstretched, the latter cried:

“You don’t know me—I’ll bet you don’t!”

Clean-shaven, his skin tanned and reddened by sun and cold, he didn’t look like the Robledo of the photograph. And yet ... there was something familiarly distinctive about him, something Torre Bianca recognized as having once formed a part of his own life.... Something in the vigorous curve of the shoulders, something about his energetic robustness.

“Robledo!”

The friends embraced; and the servant, convinced now that his presence was superfluous, left the room.

As they smoked and talked, Robledo and Torre Bianca looked at one another with eager interest, putting out a hand now and then to assure themselves that the long absent friend was really there.

It was the Marquis who betrayed the greater curiosity.

“Will you be able to stay long in Paris?” he inquired.

“Oh, just a few months....”

He felt the need, he added, of a long draught of civilization, after spending ten years in American deserts, absorbed in the strenuous task of building roads, railroads and canals across their wide extent.

“I want to find out if the Paris restaurants still deserve their reputation, and see if the French wines are as good as they used to be. And I haven’t had any fromage de Brie for years—no other country in the world can make it—and I’m hungry for some!”

The Marquis laughed. The same old Robledo, ready to go three thousand miles to have a meal in Paris! And then, with great interest, he inquired:

“Are you rich?”

“Poor as ever,” was Robledo’s prompt reply. “But I’m alone in the world, I’m not married—there’s nothing so expensive as a wife—so, for a few months I’ll be able to spend money like a regular American millionaire. I have the money I’ve been earning all this time, I couldn’t spend it in the desert.”

He turned to look about him at the luxurious furnishings of his friend’s home.

“You’re the fellow that’s rich, I see!”

The Marquis’s only reply was an enigmatical smile; but Robledo’s words awakened his worries.

“Tell me about what you have been doing,” the engineer urged. “You never sent me much news of yourself. Some of your letters must have been lost, although wherever I went, up to recently, I always established a good many connections. Yes, I know a little about you. I believe you got married a few years ago.”

Torre Bianca nodded, and said gravely,

“I married a Russian lady, the wife of a high government official of the Czar’s court. I met her in London. We met frequently at balls and country houses ... and finally we married. We make a few pretensions to elegance—but it’s damned expensive!”

He paused for a moment, as though he wanted to learn what impression this summary of his life made upon Robledo. But the latter, eager to learn more, wisely kept silence.

“You, my dear Robledo, leading the simple life of primitive man, are lucky enough not to know what it costs to live in our civilization. I’ve worked like a dog just to keep things going—and even at that! And my poor old mother helps me with whatever she can get out of our family ruins.”

Then Bianca seemed to repent of the note of complaint in what he was saying; and with an optimism which, a half hour ago, he would have considered absurd, he smiled, and went on,

“Really I ought not to complain. There is a friendship that means a great deal in my life. Do you know the banker Fontenoy? You may have heard of him; he has business all over the world.”

Robledo shook his head. No, he had never heard that name.

“He is an old friend of my wife’s family. Thanks to Fontenoy, I became a while ago the director of some development projects in foreign countries, for which I get a salary that would have seemed to me magnificent a few years ago.”

Robledo expressed his professional curiosity. “Improvements in foreign countries!” Of course the engineer wanted to know more about that, and asked some very definite questions. But Torre betrayed a certain uneasiness in his replies. He stammered, and his sallow cheeks reddened slightly.

“Enterprises in Asia and in Africa—gold mines, and a railroad in China—a shipping company formed to handle the rice products of Tonkin, and—as a matter of fact, I’m not up on the scheme as a whole. I’ve never had time for the trip, and then, too, I can’t leave my wife—But Fontenoy, who has a great head of business, has been to all these places, and I have the greatest confidence in him. As a matter of fact, my job is just a matter of signing reports made by the experts Fontenoy sends out there to satisfy share-holders.”

Robledo could not conceal a certain astonishment at these words. Torre, aware of his friend’s wonderment, changed the subject. He began talking of his wife in a tone which indicated that he thought it one of the achievements of his life to have won her. He knew that Elena charmed apparently everyone who came within the reach of her beauty. But as he had never since his marriage felt the slightest doubt concerning her affections, he was content to follow her meekly about, scarcely visible in the foaming wake of her triumphant progress. As a matter of fact, everything that came his way, invitations, generous pay for his services, a cordial reception wherever he went, came to him, not because he was the Marquis de Torre Bianca, but because he was Elena’s husband.

“You’ll see her in a little while. And of course you’ll have lunch with us. You can’t refuse. I have some choice wines, and since you have come all the way from the western hemisphere for some Brie cheese, I’ll see that you get plenty of it.”

And then he added, in a tone that partly betrayed his emotion,

“I can’t tell you how glad I am that you are going to meet my wife. Everyone calls her ‘la bella Elena’—but she has something so much better than beauty! She has a disposition just like a child’s—capricious, yes, sometimes, like a child—and she needs lots of money. But what woman doesn’t! And I know Elena will be glad to see you—she has heard me speak so often of my friend Robledo!”