Читать книгу The Temptress (La tierra de todos) - Vicente Blasco Ibáñez - Страница 8

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THE warm spring-like day, coming in mid-winter, delighted Robledo as he left his hotel after a hurried breakfast. It was late and the waiters, the only occupants of the dining room, had not proved inspiring company. And all the while he had been sleeping and eating, a filmy, sun-saturated mist had been hovering, a golden caress, over Paris....

“It’s good to be alive this morning,” he thought, as he wandered through the Bois feasting his eyes on the olive-browns of its winter coloring. At dusk he made his way back to the Boulevards. He would dine, he decided, and then look up the Torre Biancas, and ask them to come out with him to some place of amusement.

Happening to stop at a café, he bought a newspaper, and even before opening it, had the premonition that in this sheet, fresh from the press, there was something that would startle him. In some obscure way he felt that he was about to learn things that until that moment had been vague and mysterious.... And, as though he had known about it beforehand, his eyes immediately fell on the headlines “Banker Commits Suicide.”

He did not need to read the suicide’s name to know who it was. Of course it was Fontenoy! There were the details, quite as he expected them to be, as though they had all been previously revealed to him.

“In his luxurious apartment ... on the bed ... the revolver still in his hand ... Fontenoy....”

Already the day before rumors of his failure had been circulated in financial circles, where it was also stated that he would be prosecuted. His share-holders had lodged a complaint against him, and the examining judge was expected to look through his books that very day; all of which seemed to foreshadow the immediate arrest of the banker.

Robledo read again the paragraph of the article, in which it was stated that Fontenoy had deceived the people who entrusted their money to him, that his mining and other enterprises in Asia and Africa were little better than dream projects, capable of development perhaps, but by no means actually producing, as Fontenoy had represented. The article furthermore went on to suggest that the banker was more of a visionary than a criminal, which of course didn’t at all do away with the fact that he had ruined a great many people. Moreover, it appeared that he had appropriated considerable sums for his personal expenditures, “and responsibility for the disaster will undoubtedly involve some of his associates.”

The articles ended by prophecying not only the banker’s arrest, but that of all those who held important positions in his company.

Robledo’s thoughts turned abruptly from the suicide to his friend. What was to become of Federico? He ordered the taxi driver to take him to the Avenue Henri Martin.

The butler received him with a funereal air, as though there had been a death in the house. No, the Marquis was not at home. He had gone out at noon, when someone telephoned him about the suicide, and hadn’t yet come in.

“And Madame la Marquise,” continued the servant, “is quite ill, and can see no one.”

Robledo, as he listened to the fellow, was able to judge of the commotion caused in the house by the banker’s death. The icy and solemn demeanor of the servants had vanished. Now they looked like the shivering crew of a doomed ship waiting for the final crash that will throw them into the sea. Robledo heard whisperings and furtive steps behind the portières, and hands pulled them aside and curious eyes peered out at him.

Evidently, in the servants’ quarters, there had been much talk about what was going on, and about the probable arrival of the police. Every time the door bell rang, they were expected. In a tone of suppressed rage the chauffeur kept saying to his companions below stairs—

“So the captain couldn’t think of anything to do but put a bullet through his head! Well this ship is going down, I tell you! Who’s going to pay us our wages?”

Robledo returned to the centre of the city for dinner, and called up Torre Bianca several times during the course of it.

At nearly twelve o’clock the butler replied that his master had just come in, and Robledo hurried back to his friend’s home.

He found Federico in the library. The latter had aged over night as though the last few hours had been so many years. Impulsively Torre embraced his friend, turning instinctively to him for support.

The poor Marquis was not only startled, he was bewildered. Never had he lived through so many emotions in so short a space of time. That morning, like Robledo, he had felt the confidence and pleasure that the golden beauty of the day inspired. What a pleasure to be alive!... And then the summons of the telephone, the ghastly news, the rush to Fontenoy’s apartment, the sight of his friend’s body on the bed; and the grisly crowd a violent death always assembles, for that detail that seems so grotesquely insignificant before the reality of death, the autopsy....

Even more painful were his impressions at Fontenoy’s office. There he found a judge installed in full possession of all the banker’s effects, examining papers, affixing seals, making out an inventory, coldly, suspiciously, implacably. The secretary—it was he who had notified Torre Bianca—was making valiant efforts to conceal his terror.

“We aren’t going to get out of this so easily,” he said, manfully trying to face the facts that had come so uncomfortably near. And then as a concession to his fears he added, “The boss ought to have tipped us off....”

Torre Bianca spent the rest of the day looking up the people who had in various ways been associated with Fontenoy. Many of them had been receiving handsome salaries for sitting on the board of directors, taking their orders of course from the man who paid them. Now they were thoroughly frightened, and Torre Bianca saw that, to save their skins, they would not hesitate to lie about him or anyone else who might be found to serve as a scapegoat....

They lost no time in making out their case against him.

“You signed those reports stating that the business was all right. Of course you must have seen those foreign concerns with your own eyes, otherwise you’d have no right to affix your name to the technical reports that were used to win our confidence....”

Yes, it was quite plain to Torre Bianca that all these people were going to look for someone who was still alive on whom to throw all the odium of a scandalous confidence-game, since Fontenoy had eluded them.

“Manuel,” he said that evening to his friend, “I’m scared! And the worst of it is that now I myself can’t understand why I signed those accursed reports! They didn’t seem to me so particularly important.... How could I possibly have such blind faith in what Fontenoy was doing?”

Robledo smiled sadly. He knew who was responsible for this “blind faith”; but he concluded that it would be cruel to add to his friend’s distress by giving him his views on that subject.

Even in the midst of his tormenting anxieties Torre Bianca was thinking more of his wife’s distress than of his own.

“Poor Elena! I’ve just been up to talk to her.... She nearly collapsed when I told her I had seen Fontenoy this morning.... The whole thing has been such a shock that her nerves are all unstrung.”

Robledo grew impatient of his friend’s concern for Elena’s health. He broke out brusquely—

“You’d better think about your own situation and stop bothering about your wife. You’ve got more than a matter of ‘nerves’ to face.”

Little by little as they discussed the affair, both men began to feel more hopeful. Familiarity with misfortune invariably robs it of its terrors! There was no need, they decided, to despair, until the banker’s affairs had been thoroughly investigated. Fontenoy was far more of a visionary than a crook, even his worst enemies admitted it. And it was more than likely that some of the enterprises he had planned and started would turn out to be good investments. He had been wrong of course in trying to hurry them up, and in giving the public to understand that they were far more developed and remunerative than they actually were. But a few competent managers could find a way to make them productive; and that would justify Fontenoy’s statements, and prove that Torre Bianca had done nothing out of the way in signing them in his capacity of engineering expert.

“Yes, perhaps it will all be straightened out,” said Robledo, who felt that it was wise to cheer up his friend as much as possible. Torre Bianca’s distress of mind had considerably alarmed him, and he believed that only by recovering a certain amount of confidence in himself could he face the immediate future. The man needed to think clearly, and for that he must have a good night’s rest!

“You’ll see a turn for the better as soon as the first flurry is over, Federico! Only, for God’s sake, don’t pay any attention to whatever Fontenoy’s parasites advise you to do, for they’re in a panic!”

As soon as Robledo got up the next day he sent for the newspapers. One glance at their headlines showed him only too plainly that Fontenoy’s suicide was assuming the proportions of a public scandal. It was intimated that several persons well known in society were threatened with arrest within forty-eight hours, and in one of the papers he thought he discerned allusions to Torre, in a somewhat vague sentence about a certain engineer, “reputed to be a protégé of the banker’s.”

When he returned to his friend’s he found the Marquis nervously scanning the newspapers in the library.

“They want to put me in jail,” said the latter dolefully. He looked old and broken, but curiously resigned.

“And yet I never hurt anyone,” he went on. “I can’t understand why they come after me.”

Robledo tried to cheer him up a bit but without success.

“And see what it’s done to me! I never in my life feared a living soul, and now I can’t stand having anyone look at me! Even when the butler speaks to me I have to look away.... Heaven only knows what they’re saying about me in the servants’ quarters!”

As though he had shrunk back from the painful present to his childhood, he added timidly and with pathetic humility,

“I’m afraid to go out. I’m afraid of seeing all those people I’ve met so often in this drawing-room and that, because if I met them I’d have to stop and explain what I’ve done—and then they would look at me sceptically, or worse than that, they would say they were sorry for me, without meaning it!”

He stopped, and after a pause, he exclaimed,

“Elena is much braver than I! This morning, after seeing the newspapers, she ordered the automobile. I don’t know where she was going, probably to see some of those people. She said I ought to defend myself against all these accusations. But what defense have I? I can’t pretend that I didn’t sign reports about business I knew nothing about! I can’t lie about it.”

Robledo tried in vain to make him feel less hopeless. His optimism had collapsed under the attacks made upon it.

“Elena believes, as you do, that everything will come out all right. She is so confident in her power that she never gives up. Of course she has a lot of friends in Paris, people who knew her family in Russia. She went away this morning vowing that she would run down my enemies and all their machinations.... She thinks I have a lot of them and that they will use this Fontenoy business to destroy me.... And it’s true that she knows much more than I do about everything; it wouldn’t surprise me if she succeeded in making the newspapers and even the judge change their tone, and stop talking about proceedings and a prison sentence!”

It hadn’t been easy for him to bring out that word!

“A prison sentence! What do you think of a Torre Bianca in jail, Manuel? No, that’s something that shouldn’t be allowed to happen. And there is always a way to avoid that!”

As though all his forebears had awakened in him at the threat of public disgrace, he suddenly regained his former nervous and vibrant energy. But Robledo, startled by the cold gleam like the glitter of drawn steel that flashed from his friend’s eyes, exclaimed,

“You aren’t thinking of anything so foolish, Federico! After all, life is the best thing we’ve got. Death doesn’t solve anything ... and anyway, who knows? Perhaps you are right about Elena. Perhaps she will be able to influence the outcome of this affair.... It isn’t so improbable!”

As he left the house Robledo noticed several persons in the reception room. The butler murmured to him confidentially,

“They’re waiting for Madame la Marquise, sir. I told them the Master was out.”

His manner made it quite plain that these were people who had come to collect the money owing to them.

What little credit the Torre Biancas still possessed had vanished at the banker’s suicide. All the tradespeople knew that Fontenoy was paying most of the bills of the establishment; and obviously, since the Marquis’ income came from his employment in Fontenoy’s office, that too had been cut off.

It was clear to Robledo now that he always found the Marquis in the library because that was his refuge. He was afraid ... he was afraid of even the people in his own house....

Later that day he called Torre up. Elena had just come in, and seemed pleased with the results of her expedition.

“She thinks,” confided the Marquis over the telephone, “that the blow isn’t going to fall right away—that she has gained time, and that’s everything!”

That evening Robledo went back to the Avenue Henri Martin. He had found nothing in the evening papers to justify Torre Bianca’s comparative tranquillity. The allusions to the probable arrest of well-known personages continued, and there was a considerable expenditure of rhetoric about the scandalous and sensational failure.

When he found copies of the same newspapers he had just finished reading lying about on Torre’s library table, he was prepared to find the Marquis dispirited and anxious. There was an odd discrepancy between Federico’s voice, which was calm and cold, and the tenseness of his features. Evidently he had resolved to place all his hopes in the possible results of Elena’s attempts to influence public opinion in his favor. In other words he admitted that only a miracle could save him. And if the miracle did not occur....

Robledo looked about him, staring at the desk, the book shelves. Was there a revolver in that room? Had his friend prepared to this extent for a fatal emergency?

“Are there some people out there?” Torre asked.

As he seemed to be well aware of the annoying callers who had waited throughout the day in the reception hall, Robledo did not ask him to account for his question, but merely shook his head. The Marquis, however, was determined to speak of that invading throng of creditors rushing in on him from all parts of Paris.

“They smell death,” he said. “They are alighting on this house like a flock of crows.... When Elena came in this afternoon, the hall was full of them. But she is wonderful! No one can resist her when she chooses to exert her power over people. She simply talked to them ... and they went away quite satisfied. If she had asked them for a loan I believe they would have given it to her.”

He was so proud, for the moment, of his wife’s seductive charm! But reality soon thrust itself upon his attention.

“They will come back,” he added mournfully. “They have gone away, but they will come back tomorrow. It’s true that Elena saw certain influential friends of hers today, people who can affect the policy of the papers, and the courts. They all promised to help her, but as soon as Elena leaves them, it is no longer the same.... I don’t doubt that they were perfectly sincere in what they said to her. But, after all, what can a woman do against so many enemies? Besides, I ought not to allow my wife to go about defending me while I stay locked up here! I know what a woman is exposing herself to when she asks men for their help. No, I’d rather go to jail....”

Only a moment ago he had been intimidated by the thought of his creditors, much as a child is frightened by the thought of bogeys; and now, the idea that Elena might be exposing herself to all sorts of risks on his account, brought a flash to his eyes; he straightened up as though galvanized by a stream of nervous energy.

“I forbade her making these calls, even though the people she went to see are old friends of her family’s. But there are certain things a man can’t allow a woman to do.... How can I let Elena ask people to help me? No, I’m going to trust to fate, and take what comes! And after all, unless a man’s a coward there’s always one solution to the problem—”

Robledo had been listening patiently. He understood his friend; and gravely he replied,

“I know a better solution than yours, Federico. Come back to Argentina with me!”

Calmly and methodically, as though he were explaining a matter of business or an engineering project, he told Torre what he wanted him to do.

It was absurd to hope that Fontenoy’s affairs, hopelessly tangled up by his suicide, could be straightened out; and moreover it was dangerous to remain in Paris. “I am aware besides, of what you are planning to do, tomorrow, perhaps even tonight, if you begin thinking that there is no way out. You’ll lay your revolver beside you on the desk, write two letters, one to your wife, one to your mother. Your mother! That will be her reward for all that she has done for you! You will leave her to face the world alone by rushing out of it to save your own hide....”

Torre listened with lowered head. His mother and all the Torre Biancas seemed to be looking at him reproachfully....

Suddenly he looked up. “Do you think that it would be easier for my mother to see me in jail?”

“You don’t have to go to jail to avoid committing suicide. What I ask you to do is this. Trust yourself to me for a little while. Do as I tell you, without wasting any time in argument. We must come to a decision.”

Knowing that Federico was as conscious of the newspapers on the table as he was, he went on,

“In my opinion you are not going to get out of this mess if you stay here. On the contrary! So, tomorrow we’ll start for South America. Out in Patagonia you can get an engineering job and work with me. What do you say?”

But Torre Bianca remained impassive, as though he didn’t understand, or as though he thought the suggestion too absurd to deserve an answer. His silence annoyed Robledo.

“I am thinking, of course, of the fact that you signed documents without knowing whether the statements in them were true or not.”

“I can think of nothing else,” replied the Marquis. “That is why I have decided that the only thing I can do....”

Robledo could not contain his annoyance. Walking up and down he answered, and his voice sounded very loud—

“I won’t have you die, you old fool! You’re taking your orders from me now! Pretend, if you like, that I’m your father—no, your mother, rather. Look upon me as your poor old mother. She wants you to obey her, Federico, by doing what I tell you!”

His friend’s vehemence made its impression on the Marquis. He covered his eyes with his hands and sat, head bowed, in silence. Using the advantage he had gained, Robledo went on, with something that was far more difficult to say.

“I’ll get you out of here, you can rely on that, and we’ll go together to America. You can begin life all over again there. It will be hard work, but you’ll find a satisfaction in it that you never knew in this old world. And perhaps, after going through a lot of hardship, you will become rich. But, in order to accomplish all this, Federico, you must come to America ... alone....”

The Marquis started up from his chair. He looked at his friend with pained surprise. “Alone?” Did Robledo dare suggest that he must abandon Elena? Why death was preferable! What torture, to wonder every moment what was becoming of her ...!

But Robledo, thoroughly irritated now, as always, by being opposed, exclaimed,

“Oh, Elena! Elena is—”

A glance at the Marquis made him drop his hostile tone.

“Elena is largely to blame for the situation you are in today, my friend! It was through her that you knew Fontenoy—and so, more or less directly, it was through her that you came to sign statements that mean nothing less than your professional disgrace.”

Federico shrank away, but Robledo went on mercilessly,

“How did your wife happen to know Fontenoy, anyway? You told me he was a friend of her family’s, but was that all you knew about him?”

For a moment he restrained himself only to burst out angrily,

“Women always know about us, and of them we know only what they choose to tell us....”

The Marquis looked confused. What was Robledo saying?

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said finally. “But if you are talking about my wife, please remember that she bears my name, and that ... I am very fond of her....”

In the pause that followed a distance increasing with the minutes separated the two men. Robledo made a determined effort to renew the cordiality of their relations.

“Life over there is hard. We are very far from having even the most ordinary comforts of civilization. But the desert is a great sea of energy that cleanses and strengthens those of us who go to it as refugees from the old world, or from ourselves. A plunge into it prepares us for a new kind of life, a life such as you know nothing of.... You find there men who have escaped from all sorts of catastrophes, men from everywhere. Yet all differences of race, birth, and breeding are washed away. Only the fundamentals remain. There men show themselves for what they are, the strength that is in them freed from all the bonds that entangle you here.... And that is why I call my country what it really is—‘the land of all the world’. It is waiting for us, Federico!”

But the Marquis appeared unmoved.

“And what is waiting for you here? Perhaps public disgrace or prison, or even that most stupid of deaths, suicide. But there you will learn to know hope again, hope, the best thing in our lives! Are you coming with me?”

The Marquis turned to him. His reply was ready. But Robledo checked him with a gesture.

“You understand the conditions.... You must go out there as you would go to war, with little baggage and no encumbrances. A woman, in this sort of expedition, is nothing but a burden. Your wife isn’t going to die of grief just because you leave her in Europe. You can always write—and such an absence as that renews instead of exhausting love. Besides, you will be sending her money to live on, and whatever way you look at it, you will be doing more for her than by going off to jail or shooting yourself. Are you coming with me, Federico?”

Torre Bianca remained silent for a space. Then he got up, made a gesture which Robledo interpreted as meaning that he was to wait, and left the room.

The American did not remain alone long; nor did he remain altogether in silence, for through the walls and hangings, came, as from a great distance, the sound of voices, that rose once or twice to the intensity of angry cries. Then came the sound of approaching steps, and Elena appeared, followed by her husband.

Elena, too, bore the traces of recent events. For her, too, certain hours she had just lived through had been so many years. But although she appeared much older, she was none the less handsome. On the contrary, her tired beauty seemed more sincere than the skillfully enhanced splendor of her happier days. Now she possessed the melancholy charm that flowers have just as they begin to fade. For twenty-four hours she had neglected her dressing table. During that time she had experienced a succession of emotions that were either extremely painful or else annoying to her vanity. For it was difficult for her to think more of her husband’s distress than of what people were saying....

With a violent gesture she pulled aside the hangings, and swept into the library like a foaming tide, her eyes defying Robledo as she advanced.

“What is this you sent Federico to tell me?” she demanded harshly. “Is it true that you want to take him away with you and force him to leave me here, to face our enemies?”

Torre Bianca, who was following her, once more subdued to her spell, began to protest, in order to soothe her.

“I shall never abandon you, Elena, that is what I told Manuel!”

But Elena was intent upon Robledo, and continued advancing toward him.

“And I thought you were a friend! How despicable of you, trying to rob a wife of her husband’s support, trying to make him abandon her!”

As she spoke, she looked fixedly into Robledo’s eyes as though she were trying to see her own reflection in them. But what she found there was something that made her suddenly soften her voice, and finally adopt a childish air of disgust. Even, she raised a finger to scold him. The American, however, remained unmoved before these manœuvres, and Elena had to continue with what dignity she could:—

“Come, please explain all this to me! What is this plan of yours to take my husband away from me, and carry him off to your distant estate where you live like a feudal lord?”

Unmoved either by her voice or her eyes, Robledo replied coldly as though explaining a matter of business.

He and Federico had just been discussing the best means of getting the Marquis out of Paris. It was his intention to have an automobile ready for his friend the following morning, quite as though it had suddenly struck his fancy to take a trip to Spain. Obviously certain precautions were necessary. Torre Bianca was free to go and come as he liked but it was quite possible that, while the judge was making up his mind as to how to carry on the case, the Marquis was being watched by the police. Although the Spanish frontier was several hundred miles away, they could reach it before any order was given for Torre’s arrest. Besides Robledo had some friends near there, who could, in case of danger, help them to get through to Barcelona, and once in that port, it would be easy to take passage for South America.

Elena listened frowning.

“All that is very beautifully worked out,” she rejoined. “But why is this plan to include only my husband. Why can’t I go too?”

Torre Bianca looked his surprise. Only a few hours ago, on returning from the calls she had been making, Elena had exhibited great confidence in the future, partly to arouse her husband’s courage, partly to stimulate her own. The people she had seen were men with whom she had an acquaintance of long standing, and from them she had collected many promises, given, for the most part, with the melancholy and protecting gallantry inspired by memories.... Having nothing to depend on at present but these promises, she had, of course, found it necessary to place implicit trust in them, persuading herself to believe in their efficacy. But now, on hearing Robledo’s plan, all her carefully patched up optimism crumbled into dust.

Her friends’ promises were nothing but lies! They would do nothing for her or her husband now that they were in difficulties; and the law would take its course. Federico would go to prison, and she would have to take up again a life full of uncertainties in this old world, where she could scarcely find a corner that she had not at some time known before.... Besides, here there were so many enemies, eager for revenge....

Robledo saw something he had never seen before in her eyes—fear, the fear of the animal at bay. And for the first time also he heard a note of complete sincerity in her voice.

“And you, Manuel, are the only person in the world who understands our situation; you are the only person who can help us.... Let me go with you! I am not strong enough to stay here alone. I’d rather be a beggar out there in the new world!”

Her tone now was so gentle and expressed such distress that Robledo felt sorry for her. He forgot all that he had once held up against her.

Torre Bianca, as though aware of his friend’s sudden weakening, announced resolutely:

“Either with her, or not at all, Robledo. I am not afraid to stay here.”

Still Robledo hesitated. At last he raised his hand, accepting his friend’s condition. And at once he regretted it, as though he had capriciously given his approval to something absurd.

Elena, forgetting her present worries with startling ease, began to laugh.

“I adore travelling,” she began enthusiastically. “And I shall ride horseback and hunt wild animals, and have all sorts of hairbreadth escapes. Life will be so much more interesting than here! I shall feel just like the heroine of a novel!”

The American looked at her, startled. Had she no feeling? No memory? Had she already forgotten Fontenoy? She seemed at that moment not to know that she was still in Paris, and that the police might at any moment step into that house to arrest her husband.

And just as disturbing was the discrepancy between the actual conditions in which colonists make their fight for existence, and this woman’s romantic illusions about those conditions.

Torre Bianca interrupted his wife by saying in a hopeless tone,

“But we can’t leave without paying our debts! And what are we going to do it with?”

Again Elena burst out laughing, at the same time making a gesture which implied that she thought he must have taken leave of his senses.

“Pay! What an idea! Let them wait! I can always find something to say to them that will satisfy them.... And from America we can send them money when you are rich.”

But the more scrupulous Marquis was obsessed by the thought of his responsibilities toward his creditors.

“No. I shall not leave until we have paid the servants at least. But, in addition, we need money for the trip.”

There was a long pause; finally, as though he had found a solution, the Marquis exclaimed,

“Fortunately there are your jewels. We can sell them before we sail.”

Elena looked ironically at the necklace and rings she was wearing.

“We won’t get two thousand francs for the lot. They are all paste, Federico.”

“But the real ones?” exclaimed Torre Bianca. “Those you bought with the money from your estate in Russia?”

Robledo thought it the moment to intervene.

“Never mind the jewels, Federico. I’ll pay your servants and the trip out ... for both of you.”

Elena grasped both his hands, repeatedly thanking him. The Marquis was touched by his friend’s generosity. But he could not accept it, he asserted. Robledo cut his protestations short.

“That’s all right! I came to Paris with enough money to last me six months. If I go back at the end of four weeks, I can afford to pay your expenses.”

Then, with comic despair he added,

“It only means that I’ll have to leave without going to several of the new restaurants, and without having some of the most famous wines.... After all that isn’t such a great sacrifice!”

The Marquis grasped his friend’s hand in silence, while Elena shamelessly embraced him. All she could talk about now was that unknown land, for which, a few hours earlier, she had had not even a thought. To her childish enthusiasm it had suddenly become a paradise.

“How glad I shall be to reach that new country, the country that, you once said, was waiting there for all those who needed it!”

And while she and her husband discussed the preparations necessary for setting off the next day on their long journey, Robledo was saying to himself, as he watched them,

“Now you’ve done it! A fine present you are going to bring those people out there. It’s true they lead hard lives, but at least they live in peace....”