“I have just received your letter. How it consoles me! In fact, it made me laugh out loud. I have recovered from my fit of spleen; I’m not crying anymore; I’m happy, so happy that I don’t knoo how to express it. But don’t try to impress me with your lemon trees and your undulous stream. As a free and honorable woman, I accept you as you are, a common rustic and a keeper of chickens. You are as you are, and I as I are. This idea that two people who love each other must become the same and think the same is quite simply inconceivable to me. Living one for the other! Two in one! What nonsense our egotism invents! Why this fusion of personalities? Let each be as God made him or her because, being different, they will love each other more. Leave me untethered, don’t tie me up, don’t erase my . . . shall I say it? Such big words stick in my throat, but, no, I’ll say it anyway: my idiosingrassee.
“By the way, my teacher says that soon I will know more than she does. Pronunciation is my one stumbling block, but don’t worry, I’ll overcome it. This little tongue of mine will do whatever I tell it to. Bring on the clouds of incense! Such modesty! Anyway, I would have you know that I have mastered Grammar, I have devoured the Dictionary, my memory is as prodigious as my understanding (those are not my words, but Señá Malvina’s). She’s not one for jokes and believes that, with me, it’s best to start at the end. And so, just like that, we have plonged into Don Guillermo, that immense poet, the finest creator since God according to Seneca . . . no, I mean Alexandre Dumas. Doña Malvina has her Shakespeare glossary by heart and knows the texts of all his plays like the back of her hand. She let me choose, and I chose Macbeth, because I’ve always found Lady Macbeth such a sympathetic character. She’s my friend . . . Anyway, we immediately got to grips with that tragedy. The witches have telled me that I will be queen . . . and I believe them. Anyway, we’re translating it as we go along. Oh, my love, that exclamation from Señá Macbeth, when she cries out to the heavens with all her heart unsex me here, it makes me tremble and awakens all kind of terrible emotions in the depths of my being! Since you are not a member of the enlightened classes, you will not understand what that means, and I will not explain because it would be like casting pearls . . . No, you are my heaven, my hell, my magnettick pole, and my compass needle is always pointing straight at you, your own dear servant, your . . . Lady Restitute.”
Thursday, 14th
“Oh, I forgot to mention. The great Don Lope, terror of families, is all sweetness and light at the moment. He’s still a martyr to his rheumatism, but has nothing but nice things to say to me. He’s taken to calling me his daughter now, to relish the joy (or so he says) of calling himself my papa and to imagine that he really is. E se non piangi, de che pianger suoli?* He regrets not having understood me better, not having cultivated my intelligence. He curses his negligence . . . But there’s still time, we can still regain lost ground. I will have a profession that will allow me to be free and honorable; he will, if necessary, sell the shirt off his back. He has begun by bringing me a cartload of books, but since he has never had any in his house, they come from the library of his friend the Marquis de Cícero. Needless to say, I fell on them like a ravening wolf, first this one, then that, and I am positively stuffed with knowledge. Goodness, how much I knoo! In the space of eight days, I have swallowed more pages than you could buy lentils for five thousand pesetas. If you could see my little brain from inside, you would be frightened. Ideas are positively fighting for space in there. I have far too many of them and I don’t know wheech ones to keep. I will as easily bite into a volume of History as into a treatise on Philosophy. I bet you don’t know what Señor Leibniz’s monads are. And no, I did not say nomads. And if I come across a book on Medicine, I don’t rear back from that either. No, I wade straight in. I want to know more and more and more. By the way . . . No, I won’t tell you now. Another day. It’s very late: I’ve stayed awake so as to write to you; the pale torch of the moon is burning out, my love. I can hear the cock crowing, the harbinger of the new day, and already the sweet juice of henbane is flowing through my veins . . . Go on, my rustic love, admit that the bit about henbane made you laugh. Anyway, I’m exhausted and am going to my almo lecho, my sacred couch, yes sir, and there’ll be no turning back: almo, almo.”
* “If you weep not now, when will you ever weep?”: from Dante’s Inferno, canto 33, line 42.
19
FROM HER to him:
“Dearest fool, why is it that the more I know—and I know a lot—the more I idolize you? Now that I’m rather ill and sad, I think about you even more. Now don’t be so inquisitive, you want to know everything. It’s nothing really, but it bothers me. Let’s not talk about it. There’s such a racket inside my head that I’m no longer sure if it really is my head or an insane asylum where they’ve locked up all the crickets who have lost their little cricket minds. I’m just utterly bewildered all the time, always thinking and thinking a thousand things, or rather millions of things, beautiful and ugly, large and small! Strangest of all is that your face has been quite erased from my memory: I cannot see your lovely face clearly; it’s as if it were swathed in a mist that prevents me from making out your features or understanding your expression or your look. It’s infuriating! Sometimes it seems to me that the mist clears . . . then I open the eyes of my imagination very wide and tell myself ‘Now, now I’ll see him,’ but instead, I see even less, you grow still darker, you vanish completely, and farewell, my Señó Juan. You’re becoming pure spirit, an intangible being, an . . . oh, I don’t know how to describe it. When I consider what poor things words are, I feel like inventing lots more, so that I can say everything. Are you really you?
“I think everything you say about how dim-witted you’ve become is pure nonsense, designed to mislead me. No, my dear, you are a magnificent artist and carry the divine light in your brain; you will give Fame plenty to do and will amaze the world with your marvelous genius. I want people to say that, compared with you, Velázquez and Raphael were mere housepainters. They will, I promise. You’re having me on, pretending to be a rustic, a seller of eggs, and an orange grower, when, in fact, you’re silently working away and preparing a big surprise for me. They’re not bad those eggs you’re hatching! You’re doing preparatory studies for the major painting that was your hope and mine, The Embarkation of the Expelled Moriscos, for which you have already done a few sketches. Please, do it, work on that. It’s such a profoundly touching human drama! Hesitate no longer. Give up your hens and all other such foolish vulgarities. Art, glory, Señó Juanico! Art is the only rival I feel jealous of. Climb onto the horns of the moon: you can do it. If others are as capable as you are of watering the vegetables, why not apply yourself to something that only you can do? To each his own. And your business is divine art, in which you are not far off being a master. I have spoken.”
Monday
“Shall I tell you? No, I won’t. You’ll be frightened, thinking that it’s worse than it is. No, I’d rather say nothing, if you don’t mind. I can imagine you frowning at this habit of mine of taking aim and then not firing, of hinting mysteriously, then saying nothing, but at the same time saying something. Well, listen carefully. Ay, ay, ay! Can’t you hear your little Beatrice moaning? Do you think these are a lover’s complaints, that she is cooing like your doves? No, she is crying out in physical pain. Don’t go thinking that I’m a doomed consumptive like La Dame aux camélias. No, my love. Don Lope has given me his rheumatism. Now, don’t worry, Don Lope can’t give me anything anymore . . . you know what I mean. There’s no chance of that, but there is such a thing as accidental contagion. I mean that my tyrant has taken his revenge on my disdain for him by passing on to me, by some gypsy art or evil eye, the devilish illness afflicting him. When I got out of bed two days ago, I felt such a sharp pain, so very sharp. I can’t tell you where exactly because, as you know, a young lady, and an English young lady to boot, Miss Restitute, cannot, in the presence of a man, decorously name any parts of her body other than her face and hands. But I tr
ust you, shameless creature that you are, and want to speak openly: My leg hurts. Ay, ay, ay! Do you know where? Just by my knee, where that mole be . . . Well, if that isn’t trust, I don’t know what is. Doesn’t it seem cruel to you what God is doing to me? It seems only right and proper that He should heap aches and pains upon a rake like him, as punishment for a lifetime of crimes against morality, but why on me, a young thing who has only just begun to sin . . . and then only in extenuating circumstances? Why punish me so harshly for what is, after all, a first offense? He may be just, but I don’t understand it. Aren’t we fools? If only we could understand His divine intentions, etc. etc. In short, the Almighty’s decrees are causing me terrible suffering. What can it be? Will it go away soon? I despair sometimes and wonder if it isn’t God the Almighty who has sent me this ailment but the Prince of Darkness. The Devil is a bad person and wants to avenge himself on me because I angered him. Shortly before I met you, my despair was engaged in negotiating a deal with him, but then I met you and sent him packing. You saved me from falling into his clutches. The wretch swore revenge, and here it is. Ay, ay, ay! Your Restituta, your Curra de Rimini is lame. It’s no joke; I can’t walk. I’m filled with horror at the idea that, if you were here in Madrid, I wouldn’t be able to go to your studio. Although I would, of course, even if I had to drag myself there. Will you still love me as a cripple? You won’t make fun of me? You won’t lose hope? Tell me that you won’t, tell me that this lameness won’t last. Come back, I want to see you; it torments me terribly that I can no longer remember your face. I spend long hours of the night trying to imagine what you look like, and I can’t. So what do I do? I reconstruct you as best I can, I create you, doing violence to my imagination in the process. Come back soon and, along the way, pray to God, as I do, that when you arrive, your prodigy—or freak—will no longer be lame.”
Tuesday
“I bring wonderful news, Señó Juan, man of the country and of country paths, clodhopper, peaceable grower of dates, wonderful news! My leg has stopped hurting! I’m not limping anymore. What relief, what joy! Don Lope is pleased that I’m better, but it seems to me that, in his heart of hearts (that very labyrinthine heart), he is sorry that his slave no longer limps, because lameness is like a shackle that binds her closer to his wretched person. Your letter made me laugh out loud. Seeing my illness as a mere dislocation caused by my attempts to clamber onto the high seat of immortality is really very witty. What troubles me is that you persist in being so stupid and clinging on to such trivial clichés: Life is short and we must enjoy it while we can! Art and glory are not worth a penny! That isn’t what you said when we first met, you rascal. That instead of bounding about, I should sit sedately on the warm flagstones of domesticity! I can’t! I grow less domestic with each day that passes. The more Saturna tries to teach me, the clumsier I grow. If that is a grave fault, then have pity on me.
“I’m so happy! First, you tell me that you will come and see me soon. Second, I’m no longer lame. Third . . . no, I won’t tell you the third thing. Oh, all right, just so that you won’t go overexerting your brain, here it is. I couldn’t sleep last night, and an idea kept fluttering around me until, finally, it got inside my noodle and made its nest there; and once it had, I was filled with a whole tormenting plague of ideas, which I will reveal to you at once. I have solved the dreaded problem. The sphinx of my destiny opened her marble lips and told me that, in order to be free and honorable, to enjoy full independence and live off my own earnings, I must become an actress. And I agree, I approve, I feel that I am an actress. I’ve never been sure until now that I had the necessary talent to appear on the stage, but now I know that I do. Those talents themselves are inside me, telling me ‘Yes!’ Feigning emotions and passions, imitating life! What could be easier when I’m capable of feeling not only what I feel now but what I would feel in all kinds of situations. With that, a good voice and a figure that is, shall we say, not too bad, I have all I need.
“I know what you’re going to say, that I’ll never have the courage to stand up there with all those eyes looking at me, that I’ll forget my lines . . . Not at all. Me, embarrassed? I have no shame, in the best possible sense of the word. Right now, I feel ready to play the most difficult and passionate of tragedies and the most delicate, witty, and coquettish of comedies. Are you mocking me? Don’t you believe me? Let’s try, shall we? Put me on the stage and then you’ll see what your Restituta can do. You’ll soon be persuaded. What do you think? I imagine you won’t like the idea, that you’ll feel jealous of the theater. When a young leading man embraces me, or when I have to cuddle up to an actor and speak words of love, that will displease you, won’t it? You wouldn’t be in the least amused if twenty thousand fools were to fall in love with me and bring me flowers and believe they had the right to declare all kinds of volcanic passions. Don’t be silly. I love you more than life itself. But you must at least agree that the dramatic art is a noble art, one of the few that a woman can honorably take up. Please agree, dear fool, and agree, too, that as a profession it would give me independence and that being independent would allow me to love you all the more, especially if you decide to be a major artist. Please do, and don’t let me see you transformed instead into an ordinary, obscure landowner. Don’t speak to me of obscurity. I want light, more light, always more light.”
Saturday
“Ay, ay, ay! All my hopes are dashed. You must have been worried sick, having received no letter from me since Tuesday. Can you guess what has happened to me? I am so unhappy. I’m lame again and in absolute agony! I have spent three dreadful days. I was taken in by that treacherous pseudo-recovery on Tuesday. On Wednesday, after a hellish night, I woke up screaming. Don Lope brought in the doctor, a certain Dr. Miquis, a pleasant young man. How embarrassing! I had no alternative but to show him my leg. He saw the mole, ay, ay ay, and told me all kinds of jokes to make me laugh. His prognosis is not, I think, very hopeful, although Don Lepe assures me that it is, doubtless to cheer me up. How on earth am I ever going to be an actress if I’m lame? It’s simply not possible. I’m quite mad. I think only grim thoughts. And what exactly is wrong with me? Nothing really. Near the place where the mole is, there’s a hard lump and if I press it or try to walk, I see stars. That Dr. Miquis, damn him, has sent me all kinds of unguents and an endless bandage, which Saturna very, very carefully wraps around my leg. I bet I’m a real picture! Your Beatrice in a poultice! I must look hideous! What a sight! I’m writing to you from an armchair, from which I cannot move. Saturna is holding the inkwell. If you were to come back now, how could I possibly visit you? Don’t come until I’m well again. I pray to God and the Virgin that I get better soon. I don’t deserve such a punishment, after all, I haven’t been so very bad. What crime have I committed? Loving you? Is that a crime? Since I have the dreadful habit of looking for il perche delle cose,* I wonder if God has made a mistake, goodness, what blasphemy! No, He doesn’t make mistakes. We will suffer. Patience, although, to be frank, not being able to become an actress enrages me and makes me throw away all the patience I had managed to muster. But what if I do get better . . . because I will, I won’t have a limp or only one so slight that I can easily disguise it.
“If you weep not now, when will you ever weep? And if you don’t love me more and more and more, you deserve to have the Prince of Darkness take you and put out your eyes. I am so miserable! I don’t know whether it’s just my distress or the effect of the illness, but it’s as if all my ideas had fled, had flown away. Will they ever come back? Do you think they will? Then I start thinking and I say: Dear God, where are all the things I read about, all the things I learned from those big fat books? They must be flitting around my head, the way birds flitter around a tree before roosting for the night, and they will come back, they will. I’m just very sad and low in spirits, and the idea of having to walk on crutches weighs on me. No, I don’t want to be lame. I would rather . . .
“To distract me, Malvina suggested that we start le
arning German together. I sent her packing. I don’t want German, I don’t want languages, all I want is my health back, even if, afterwards, I’m a complete dolt. Will you love me if I’m lame? No, I will get better. Of course I will! It would be so unfair if I didn’t, a barbarous act on the part of Providence, of the Almighty, of the . . . oh, I don’t know. I’m going mad. I need to cry, to spend all day crying . . . but I’m too angry and I can’t cry when I’m angry. I hate the whole human race, apart from you. I wish they would hang Malvina, shoot Saturna, publicly whip Don Lope, parade him on a donkey, and then burn him alive. I’m in a terrible state; I don’t know what I’m thinking or what I’m saying . . .”
*“The why of things”: a line from Leopardi’s poem “Canto Notturno.”
20
AS EVENING fell on one of the last days in January, a melancholy, taciturn Don Lope Garrido entered his house like a man on whose spirit weighed the very heaviest of griefs and cares. In a matter of a few months, age had invaded the territory that the pride and spirit of his mature years had hitherto always managed to fend off; he was rather stooped now; his noble features had taken on a somber, earthy tinge; the gray hairs on his head were prospering and, to complete this picture of decay, there was also a certain air of neglect about his clothes, which was even more pitiful to see than the deterioration in his physical appearance. His habits had also been affected by this sudden change, for Don Lope now rarely went out at night and spent most of the day at home. One can understand the reason for such a decline because it is worth repeating that, apart from his complete moral blindness in the matter of love, this now redundant libertine was a man of good feelings and could not bear to see the people close to him suffer. True he had dishonored Tristana and ruined her for society and for marriage, trampling her fresh youth, but never confuse kindness with weakness, for he loved her deeply and it pained him immeasurably to see her ill and with little hope of a speedy recovery. According to what Dr. Miquis had said on his first visit, it would be a long process, and he had offered no assurances that she would get well again, that is, recover from her lameness.
Tristana Page 12
