Don Lope entered the house and, removing his cape in the hallway, went straight to his slave’s room. The poor girl looked so ill from enforced inactivity and from the moral and physical burden of her painful illness! She sat still and quiet in the armchair he had bought for her, and which could be opened out and extended so that she could rest whenever sleep overcame her; wrapped in a checkered shawl, with her hands folded and her head bare, Tristana wasn’t a shadow of her former self. Nothing could compare with the pallor of her skin; the paper pulp from which her lovely face seemed to be made was now incredibly diaphanous and white; her lips had taken on a purple tinge; and sadness and continual weeping had encircled her eyes with an opaline transparency.
“How are you, my dear?” Don Lope asked, stroking her cheek and sitting down beside her. “Better, eh? Miquis tells me that you’re on the road to recovery and that the pain is a sign that you’re improving. It’s not a dull pain anymore, is it? It really hurts, doesn’t it, the way a bad graze hurts. That’s what we want, pain. The swelling’s going down. Now, my dear, you must take this,” he said, showing her a small box from the pharmacist. “It doesn’t taste nasty or anything: just two pills every three hours. As for external medicine, Don Augusto says we should continue as before. So cheer up, in another month or so, you’ll be leaping about and even dancing a malagueña.”
“In another month? I don’t think so. You’re just saying that to console me. Thank you, but, alas, I won’t leap anywhere ever again.”
The note of profound sadness in her voice touched Don Lope, who was a brave man, uncowed by other things, but helpless in the face of illness. Seeing a person he loved in physical pain reduced him to being a child again.
“Don’t lose hope. I have confidence, and you must as well. Do you need more books to distract you? Do you want to do some drawing? You only have to ask. Shall I bring you some plays so that you can study your parts?” Tristana shook her head. “All right, then, I’ll bring you some nice novels or history books. Now that you’ve started cramming your head with knowledge, you don’t want to stop halfway. I have a feeling you’re going to be an extraordinary woman. I don’t know how I could have been so stupid as not to realize this before. I’ll never forgive myself.”
“You’re forgiven,” murmured Tristana, looking deeply bored.
“Shall we eat? Are you peckish? No? Well, you have to make an effort. At least have some soup and a small glass of sherry. What about a chicken leg? No? Well, I won’t insist. Now if the illustrious Saturna will give me a little food, I would be most grateful. I’m not that hungry really, but I feel slightly weak and one must feed the inner man.”
He went to the dining room, and not even noticing what was in the various dishes, for his thoughts were far removed from external things, he dispatched some soup, a little meat, and so on, then, still chewing the last mouthful, returned to Tristana.
“Now where were we? Did you have some soup? Good. I’m glad you haven’t entirely lost your appetite. I’ll stay and talk until you fall asleep. No, I’m not going out, I want to keep you company. And I don’t say that in order to be thanked. I know there was a time when I should have stayed with you and I didn’t. It’s late, very late, and these kindnesses of mine are latecomers too. But let’s not talk about that; don’t make me feel ashamed. If you don’t want me here, just say so; if you prefer to be alone, I’ll go to my room.”
“No, no, stay. When I’m alone, I think dark thoughts.”
“Dark thoughts, my dear? What nonsense. You haven’t fully grasped the myriad of good things that fate has in store for you. I recognize your qualities, rather late in the day, it’s true, but I do recognize them now. And I realize that I am not even worthy of the honor of offering you advice, but I will give the advice anyway and you can take it or leave it, as you wish.”
This was not the first time Don Lope had spoken to her in this way; and truth be told, Señorita Reluz listened to him with pleasure, because the smooth-talking gallant knew how to strike the right note, praising her taste and stimulating her dreaming imagination. It should be noted, moreover, that a few days before the scene we have described, the tyrant had given his victim proof of remarkable tolerance. Don Lope had burst in one morning when Tristana was deeply immersed in her epistolary activities, sitting in her chair, resting her letter on the piece of wood that Saturna had prepared for her as a writing tablet. Seeing her hurriedly hiding away both paper and inkwell, he smiled in kindly fashion and said, “No, no, child, you carry on writing your letters. I won’t bother you now.”
Tristana was astonished to hear these considerate words, which partly gave the lie to the old rogue’s jealous, egotistical nature, and so she happily carried on writing. Meanwhile, alone in his room with his conscience, Don Lepe gave himself a good talking-to: “I mustn’t make her any more unhappy than she already is. I feel so very sorry for her, the poor love! All right, so recently, feeling alone and bored, she met some good-for-nothing, who turned her head with a few tender words. I don’t want to do that nincompoop the honor of worrying about him. Yes, yes, they love each other and have made a thousand foolish promises. Really, young people today have no idea how to win someone’s heart, but it would be easy enough to fill with hot air the head of a girl as dreamy and excitable as Tristana. He has doubtless offered to marry her, and she believes him. And of course they exchange little notes and letters. I don’t even need to read them to know the kind of nonsense they write. Marriage, marriage, marriage, the usual refrain. Such imbecility would make me laugh if it didn’t involve this bewitching child, my last and, therefore, dearest trophy. Good God, to think that I stupidly let her slip away, but I’ll get her back, not for any nefarious purposes, of course, I’m not up to that kind of thing anymore, but simply to have the pleasure of snatching her back from that interloper—whoever he is—the man who stole her from me, and to prove that when the great Don Lope’s anger is aroused, there isn’t a man alive can get the better of him. I will love her like a daughter, I will defend her against all comers, against the various forms and types of love, whether with marriage or without . . . I want to be her father now and keep her to myself, all to myself, because I intend to live for many more years yet, and if she can’t be my wife, then I’ll have her as my beloved daughter, not that I want anyone else to touch her, mind, or even look at her.”
The profound egotism of these ideas was accompanied by a leonine snarl, as usually happened at critical moments in the old gallant’s life. He then went immediately to Tristana’s side and with a meekness that seemed to come quite naturally to him, he stroked her cheek, saying, “Don’t you worry, my poor little love. It is time to bestow a plenary indulgence. I know that you stumbled morally, even before your little leg went lame. No, it’s all right, I’m not going to tell you off. It was my fault, yes, mine and mine alone. I must take full blame for your flirtation, which was the result of my neglect and my forgetfulness. You are young and pretty. It’s hardly surprising that every young man who sees you flirts with you, or that one of them, slightly better than the others, should have pleased you, and that you should have believed his foolish promises and thrown yourself into plans of happiness that quickly turned to smoke. But let’s speak no more of that. I forgive you. Total absolution. You see, I want to be your father now, and I am beginning by . . .”
Tremulous and fearful lest these words were merely a cunning trick to make her confess her secret, and feeling more than ever under Don Lope’s mysterious sway, the captive denied everything, stammering excuses; but the tyrant, with rare affability, redoubled his kind words and fatherly expressions of affection, saying, “There’s no point denying what your confusion so clearly declares. I know nothing and I know everything. I know nothing but divine everything. The female heart holds no secrets for me. I have lived. I’m not asking you to tell me who the young gentleman is, because I really don’t care. I know the story, it’s one of the oldest in the world, one of the most ordinary, common or garden stories in
the human repertoire. He will have made you dizzy with the vulgar hope of marriage, suitable only for shop assistants and the lower orders. He will have spoken to you of the altar, the blessings of matrimony, and of a life as coarse as it is obscure, complete with scrap soup, several brats of your own making, knitting while you all sit cozily by the fire in your armchairs, and other such idiocies. And if you swallow the bait, you will be lost, you will ruin your future and give a slap in the face to your destiny—”
“My destiny!” exclaimed Tristana, reviving, her eyes bright.
“Yes, your destiny. You were born for great things, even though, as yet, we do not know what those things are. Matrimony would plunge you back into the common herd. You cannot and must not belong to anyone, only to yourself. Your idea of honorable freedom, devoted to a noble profession—an idea I did not appreciate before, but which has finally won me over—demonstrates the profound logic of your vocation or, if you like, your ambition. And you are worthy of your ambitions. Your will keeps overflowing because your intelligence has burst its banks. There are no two ways about it, my dear child,” he went on in a slightly mocking tone. “Fancy talking to a woman like you about such trivialities as scissors and thimbles and egg-laying, fireside chats and a cozy life à deux. Be very careful, my child, with these seductions intended for seamstresses and would-be ladies, because your leg will get better and you will become the finest actress the world has ever seen. And if the stage doesn’t suit you, then you will be something else, whatever you want, whatever you wish to be. I don’t know what that will be, neither do you; all we know is that you have wings, but where you will fly to . . . ah, if we knew that, we would penetrate the very mysteries of destiny, and that is forbidden to us.”
21
“GOODNESS me,” Tristana said to herself, clasping her hands and staring hard at this old man, “the things the rascal knows! He’s an out-and-out scoundrel devoid of conscience, but he knows a lot, he really does!”
“Would you agree with me, my dear?” asked Don Lope, kissing her hands, making no attempt to disguise the glee he felt inside as he sensed victory.
“I would have to say ‘Yes.’ I don’t think I am cut out for domesticity, I mean, I just don’t see myself in that role . . . But I don’t know if the things I dream of will come to anything.”
“Oh, I can see it as clear as day!” retorted Don Lope with the honest conviction with which he imbued all his lies. “Believe me, a father is never wrong, and repenting of any harm I ever did, I want to be a father to you now and only a father.”
They continued talking about the same subject, and Don Lope, making good use of his strategic skills, managed to capture the enemy position, mockingly describing the banality of an eternal union with some vulgar creature and the tedium of married life.
These ideas both flattered the young woman and served as a palliative for her grave illness. She felt better that evening and, when left alone with Saturna, before the latter went to bed, she experienced moments of elation, her ambitions more keenly felt than ever. “Yes, why shouldn’t I become an actress? I will live in decorous freedom, never binding myself eternally to anyone, not even to the man I love and will always love. The freer I am, the more I will love him.”
When Saturna, with exquisite care, had attended to her bad knee, replacing the old bandage with a fresh one, she helped Tristana into bed. Tristana spent a restless night, but consoled herself with the effluvia of her overheated imagination and with the thought of her prompt recovery. She waited anxiously for morning so that she could write to Horacio, and at dawn, before Don Lope got up, she launched into a long, excitable epistle.
“My love, my own country bumpkin, mio diletto, I am still not well, but I am happy. It’s odd, isn’t it? I can hardly expect someone else to understand me when I cannot even understand myself! Yes, I am happy and full of hopes that slip into my soul when I least expect them. God is good and sends me these joys, doubtless because I deserve them. I feel that I will get better, and even though I show no signs of doing so, it’s enough that I feel it. That allows me to believe I will fulfill my dreams, that I will be an outstanding tragic actress, that I will be able to adore you from the castle of my actorly independence. We will love each other from castle to castle, absolute masters of our respective desires, you will be free and I will be free and yet still your wife, with our own domains, no life in common, no sacred bond, no garlic soup, nothing.
“Don’t speak to me of altars, because that makes you shrink before my eyes to such a tiny size that I cannot even see you. Maybe what I’m saying is madness, but I was born to be a chronic madwoman, I’m like a dish of mutton, either take me or leave me. No, don’t leave me. I hold on to you, I bind you to me, because my madness needs your love in order to become reason. Without you, I would grow stupid, which is the worst thing that could happen.
“I don’t want either of us to be stupid. I enlarge you in my imagination when you try to make yourself small and make you handsome again when you insist on making yourself ugly, abandoning your sublime art in order to cultivate radishes and pumpkins. Don’t oppose me in my desires, don’t banish my hopes; I want you to be a remarkable man and I intend to have my own way. I can feel it, I can see it . . . it cannot be otherwise. My inner voice amuses itself by describing to me all the perfections of your being. Don’t deny that you are as I dream you to be. Let me fabricate you, no, that’s not the word, let me compose you, no, that’s not it either, let me reconstruct you, no . . . Let me think of you however I want to. That way I am happy: let me, let me . . .”
Other letters followed, in which the imagination of the poor patient ran riot in the ideal world, galloping through it like a runaway steed, in search of the impossible end of the infinite, never tiring in its wild, splendid race.
For example:
“How are you, my liege? The more I adore you, the more I forget your physiognomy, but I invent another that is equally to my taste and in accordance with my ideas and the perfections with which I wish to see your sublime person adorned. Shall I tell you a little about myself? I am in terrible pain! I thought I was getting better, but no, for reasons known only to himself, God does not want that. Your beautiful ideal, your Tristanita, may in time be famous, but she will certainly never be a dancer. My leg would not allow it. And for the selfsame reason, I doubt I will ever be an actress. I’m absolutely furious. It gets worse each day. The pain is terrible. What use are doctors? They understand nothing about the art of curing people. I would never have thought that an insignificant thing like a leg could have such influence over a person’s destiny, after all, a leg is just for walking on. I always thought it was the brain or the heart that was in charge, but now a stupid knee has turned despot, and those noble organs obey it. Or rather, they don’t obey it, they pay it no heed at all, but nevertheless suffer under an absurd despotism, which I trust will be only temporary. It’s as if the soldiery had suddenly risen up in revolt, but in the end, the rabble will have to submit.
“And you, my beloved king, how is it with you? If I did not have your love to sustain me, I would already have succumbed to this seditious limb, which wants to have its head. But I will not be cowed, and I continue to think the bold things I have always thought—no, I think more and more such things, and I climb ever upwards. My aspirations are clearer than ever; my ambition, if you can call it that, breaks free and dances like a mad thing. Believe me, you and I are made for greatness. Can you guess how? Well, I can’t explain how, but I know it. My heart tells me so and my heart knows everything and has never yet deceived me and cannot deceive me. You yourself do not understand your own worth. Do I need to reveal you to yourself? Look into me, for I am your mirror, and you will see the supreme Mount Tabor of artistic glory. I’m sure you won’t laugh at what I say, just as I’m sure that you are exactly as I believe you to be, the summation of moral and physical perfection. There are no defects in you, nor can there be, even though the eyes of the common people may see them. Know yours
elf; listen to me; surrender yourself without fear to the person who knows you far better than you do. I can’t go on. My knee hurts too much. Ah, that a bone, a wretched bone, could . . .”
Thursday
“What a day yesterday was, and what a night! But I will not be cowed. My spirit grows with suffering. Do you know, last night, when that knavish pain gave me a few moments of respite, the knowledge I have acquired from reading, and which had somehow vanished and evaporated, all came back to me. The ideas rushed in one after the other, and memory slammed the door shut so as to keep them in. Don’t be surprised; not only do I still know all that I knew, I know more, much more. Other new and unfamiliar ideas joined the old ones. I must be some kind of ideas magnet, which, as it sallies forth into the world, attracts any small ideas it meets and brings them to me. I know more, much more than before. I know everything, well, perhaps not everything. I feel so very relieved today and will devote myself to thinking about you. How good you are! Your intelligence has no equal, your artistic genius knows no bounds. I love you more deeply than ever, because you respect my freedom, because you don’t tie me to the leg of a chair or a table with the rope of matrimony. My passion demands freedom. I need a very large field to live in. I need to be free to graze on the grass that will grow all the taller as I crop it from the ground with my teeth. I wasn’t made for life in a stable. I need a limitless prairie.”
Tristana (NYRB Classics) Page 13
