Читать книгу The Temptress (La tierra de todos) - Vicente Blasco Ibáñez - Страница 6

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THE Countess Titonius appeared one day at one of Elena’s teas. The Countess was a Russian lady who had married a Scandinavian nobleman, by which act she had cast him into such complete eclipse that no one could remember ever having seen him.

Well on the way toward fifty, the Countess still possessed the dregs, albeit somewhat muddy, of a remote but once heady beauty. Her overflowing obesity, her white and flaccid flesh, now served as the support for a head and face much like those of a sentimental doll; and as the Countess was given to writing amorous verses and reciting them to anyone within hearing, she was frequently referred to in the circles in which she moved, as “the five-hundred-weight of poetry.”

Already generously decolleté by mid-afternoon, her gigantic and barbarous jewels adorned the hollows and rotundities of her quivering flesh, or set off the high lights of a red gold wig for which the Countess was perpetually purchasing additional curls.

For the most part her jewels were quite shamelessly false. Most worthy of respect among their number was a pearl necklace, which, whenever the Countess deposited her bulk in a chair, dangled grotesquely over the protruding spheres of her opulent form. The pearls, irregular, triangular-shaped, and with root marks, resembled the shark’s teeth with which the members of certain savage tribes like to adorn themselves. Gossip asserted that they were souvenirs of those lovers of her youth of whom she had been able finally to extract nothing else.... It was undeniable that the Countess was given to speaking, with no perceptible restraint, of her innumerable tender experiences.

No sooner had the Countess learned from Elena’s own lips, that Robledo was a millionaire fresh from the American wild, than she began casting glances of passionate interest in his direction. Teacup in hand, she captured him in a corner, and began a conversation to escape from which he frantically sought a pretext.

“You, who are such a traveller, such a hero, must give me the benefit of your experience. Tell me, what is your real opinion about love?”

The poetess heard the hero murmuring excuses. In spite of the tender glances of her miopic eyes, she had frightened him!

A few weeks later Elena asked him to accept an invitation to a reception at the Countess’s. “It will be amusing. Titonius is sure to ask her Bohemian friends, so as to have some applause for her poems—of course she’ll read them! There’ll be a lot of people there who come in the hope of meeting celebrities, and there’ll be no-account artists, and youths convinced that they have achieved immortality because they’ve succeeded in collecting a train of admirers, or get their things published in the columns of some wretched little sheet that nobody reads. You ought to see all those absurd people! There isn’t another house like that one in Paris. Anyway I promised the Countess that you would come and I’ll be cross if you don’t!”

To keep peace Robledo betook himself at ten o’clock one evening to the house of Mme. Titonius on the Avenue Kléber, having fortified himself beforehand by dining with some South American friends at one of the Boulevard restaurants.

Two servants, hired for the occasion, were helping the guests out of their overcoats. The mixture of various social groups that Elena had foreseen was noticeable even in the anteroom. Side by side with guests of distinguished appearance, accustomed to the life of the drawing-room, he noticed youths with leonine locks, whose formal evening dress was revealed only when they slid out of threadbare coats with tattered linings. He caught the contemptuous expression of the servants as they collected these coats, as well as certain fur wraps grown bald in spots, from ladies who, on emerging from these coverings, displayed the most extravagant of head dresses.

An old fellow whose whiskers, of a dirty white, and whose wide slouch hat made him look like the popular conception of a poet, threw off his summer overcoat and the woolen mufflers wound about him. Taking his pipe out of his mouth, he struck it on the heel of his shoe, and put it in his overcoat pocket.

“Take good care of that, now,” he said to the servant.

Robledo’s fur coat inspired respect in the attendants. One of them, after helping its owner out of it, kept it on his arm.

“You’ve taken a fancy to it?” the engineer inquired.

Paying no attention to his jesting tone, the fellow replied,

“I’ll just lay it aside, sir.... Because some one might make a mistake, that he might sir, going away from here....”

And with a gesture at the mound of unsightly coverings, he winked at Robledo.

The sight of the American “millionaire” in her own drawing room aroused great enthusiasm in the poetess. Scattering the guests to right and left, she plunged through the throng to meet him, grasped him by both hands, and leaning on his arm, bore him along with her, presenting him to her friends. Her eyes dwelt on him proudly as though he were the chief attraction of the occasion.

Only the day before Elena had given him due warning.

“Take care! The Countess is enamored of you, and kidnapping is quite in her line....”

But now the poetess, in a veritable avalanche of words, was giving vent to her enthusiasm as she introduced the American.

“A hero,” she was exclaiming, “a superman from the pampas, where he has hunted lions, tigers, and even elephants....”

Robledo looked alarmed at these fantastic improvisations, but the Countess was far beyond geographic scruples.

“When you tell me all about your wonderful deeds, perhaps I shall write a poem about them, an epic, in the modern style of course, telling the adventures of your remarkable life. Men are only interesting to me when they are heroes....”

Again Robledo wore a look of alarm.

As for the moment there chanced to be no one near at hand to whom she could present her distinguished guest, the Countess conducted him to a small room into which no one had yet wandered, perhaps because the odors drifting in through a portière betokened the close proximity of the kitchen.

Sitting down in an arm-chair as wide as a throne, she bade Robledo be seated. But when he looked around for a chair, the Countess Titonius pointed to a low stool near her feet.

“That will be more intimate,” she declared. “You will look like a page of olden times at the feet of his lady.”

Robledo could not altogether conceal his dismay at these words, but he obediently followed his hostess’s directions, although his own generous proportions were something of an obstacle.

The Countess meanwhile was imitating Elena’s childish gestures and lisping speech, with rather grotesque effect.

“Now that we are alone,” she was saying, “I hope you will speak freely with me. I am going to ask you the same question as before. What do you really think of love?”

Robledo, quite overwhelmed, murmured something about love’s being a disease from which the human race has been suffering for thousands of years, without growing any the wiser about its cause and cure.

The Countess was now very close to him, scanning him with her shortsighted eyes to which she held her shell-handled lorgnette. Leaning down over her vast girth, her cheek almost touched that of the man seated at her feet.

“And do you think that I shall ever find a soul to understand my own—so misunderstood?” she was asking him.

Robledo was quite calm as he replied gravely,

“Oh, I am sure of it. You are still young, and have plenty of time....”

The words threw the Countess Titonius into such ecstatic rapture that she could not restrain herself from caressing her companion’s cheek with the tip of her lorgnette.

“Spanish gallantry!” she sighed. “But we must part! Let us keep our secret from the eyes of a world which cannot understand.... Yes, I can read your eyes. Our souls shall meet again, more intimately ... but now my social duties call. Once more, I am nothing but a hostess.”

Rising from her arm-chair throne with all the ponderous weight of her bulk, she went away, attempting as she did so, to move with the light step of a young girl. She did not forget to throw Robledo a kiss from the end of her lorgnette.

Disconcerted by this episode, and somewhat annoyed by being placed in so grotesque a position, he also left the room.

On his way back to the drawing-room he stumbled upon a man of small stature, who, in spite of having suffered a rude blow in the collision, meekly murmured his apologies. Later Robledo saw him again, wandering timidly about, watching the servants, and at the same time looking as though he were asking their pardon for doing so, and pushing the furniture that had been deranged back to its place. Whenever anyone spoke to him he made haste to answer with abject politeness, and then fled precipitately.

The Countess meanwhile had gathered a group of men about her, for the most part long-haired individuals of those Robledo had noticed in the cloak-room. Many of the women guests were openly making fun of their hostess, raising their eyebrows at one another with a gesture whose meaning was not hard to guess. The old fellow who had left his mufflers and his pipe in the coat room announced solemnly:

“We respectfully request that our beautiful Muse recite some of her poems!” at which there was much applause, and many approving nods. But the Muse showed herself to be intractable, and began to move this way and that in her chair, shaking her head. In a weak tone, as though suddenly ill, she murmured,

“No, my friends, I cannot ... tonight, it is impossible ... some other time perhaps....”

Her admirers grew insistent, and the Countess was forced to repeat her refusals, her voice constantly fainter. Finally her guests abandoned her for livelier diversions, and turning their back on the suffering Muse, promptly forgot her.

Scarcely had a young musician, clean-shaven and with flowing locks, who strove to imitate the genial ugliness of certain modern composers, sat down at the piano and ran his fingers over the keyboard, when two girls made a dash for him, put out their hands to his shoulders, implored. They would love to hear his wonderful compositions—but later! Now he must be indulgent, and come down to the level of the crowd, and play something for them to dance to. Oh, a waltz would do, if artistic principles stood in the way of his playing one of the American dances.

Several couples began to circle round the room and were rapidly joined by others. Suddenly noticing that no one was left to pay court to her, the Countess looked about in bewilderment, then rose, saying with indulgent condescension,

“Since you really want to hear me, I’ll do as you insist. I’ll recite a short poem.”

Consternation! The pianist, however, not having heard the Countess’s surrender, went on playing, until the meek anonymous gentleman, whom Robledo had noticed trotting about, repairing the disorder caused by the guests, came up to him and grasped his hands. The music ceased, the couples stopped short, and finally, with a bored expression found chairs. The Countess began....

Staring, in an attempt to appear attentive, blinking, in an attempt to repel the advances of sleep, yawning, or sunk in blank immobility, her victims sat or lolled about. Two of the women, livelier than the rest, were feigning great interest in the recitation. One of them went so far as to put a hand behind her ear in order to hear better. A running conversation was going on, however, behind their fans, which they dropped to their laps now and then when they needed both hands for the patter of applause. But they caught them up quickly to conceal their laughter. The Countess was entertaining them so much better than she knew!