by Pierre Louys
Then it slipped away through my fingers, and the window banged shut.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IN WHICH THE READER BEGINS TO UNDERSTAND JUST WHO THE PUPPET IS IN THIS STORY
Two interminable days and nights followed. I felt happy, agitated and apprehensive; but I believe that of all the conflicting emotions that were simultaneously unsettling me, it was one of joy, a confused and almost painful joy, that predominated.
I can honestly say that during those forty-eight hours I represented to myself a hundred times ‘what was going to happen’, as well as the setting, the words and even the silences. I couldn’t help playing out in my mind’s eye the part that imminently awaited me. I saw myself, with her in my arms. And every quarter of an hour, the very same scene, in all its long, drawn-out detail, kept running through my exhausted imagination.
Finally it was time. I walked up and down her street, not daring to stop beneath her window for fear of compromising her, and yet irritated at the thought of how she was watching me from behind the panes, as she kept me waiting outside in a state of oppressive excitement.
“Mateo!”
At last she was calling me.
And suddenly, like one long dream, my love-life of the last twenty years melted away into thin air and, at that moment, I was a fifteen-year-old boy once more. I truly believed that, for the very first time in my life, I was going to press my lips hard against a woman’s lips, and feel the weight of a warm, young body relaxing in my embrace.
Putting one foot on a stone that protected the base of the wall, and the other on the curved iron bars of the window, I pulled myself up and entered her room like the lover in a stage play, and once inside I hugged her.
She stood there, close against me, both abandoning and withholding herself. As our lips met, we let our heads sink down to one side, eyes closed and nostrils panting for air. And never have I understood so clearly as then, in the dizzy, distracted and oblivious state in which I found myself, just how much truth there is in talk of ‘getting drunk on kisses’. I no longer knew who we were, nor anything of what had taken place, nor what would become of us. The present moment was so intense that it swallowed up both past and future. Her lips were moving in response to mine, her body was burning hot between my arms, and, through her skirt, I could feel her little belly rubbing against me in a fervent, lascivious caress.
“I don’t feel very well,” she murmured. “Wait a bit, I beg you … I think I’m going to faint … Come out onto the patio with me, and I’ll lie down on the cool mat there … Be patient … I love you … but I’m almost unconscious …”
*
I made for one of the doors.
“No, not that one. That’s mama’s room. It’s through here. Come along, I’ll show you the way.”
The white patio outside was dominated by a star-studded expanse of black sky, across which drifted wisps of bluish cloud. One floor of the building was entirely bathed in moonlight, but the rest of the courtyard lay plunged in intimate shadow.
Concha stretched herself out on a mat in Oriental fashion. I sat down beside her, and she took my hand.
“My friend,” she said, “Do you love me?”
“As if you needed to ask!”
“But how long will you love me for?”
I dread these questions, which all women ask, and to which one can only reply with the worst sort of platitudes.
“And when I’m no longer so attractive, will you still love me then? … And when I’ve grown old, terribly old, will you love me even then? Tell me you will, my darling. Even if it’s not true, I need you to tell me that it is, and to give me strength. You see, I promised you that it would be this evening, but I’m really not sure whether I feel up to it … or even whether you deserve it. Ah! Holy Mother of God! If I were wrong about you, I think my whole life would be ruined as a result. I’m not like those girls that go with any Tom, Dick or Harry. After you, I’ll never love anyone else, and if you ever left me, it would all but kill me.”
She bit her lip with a suppressed moan, and gazed out into empty space; but then her expression softened, and she broke into a smile.
“I’ve grown in the last six months,” she said. “I can’t even do up last summer’s bodices any more. Open the one I’m wearing now, and you’ll see how lovely I’ve become.”
Had I asked, she’d almost certainly have refused, for I was beginning to doubt whether this night so far spent in talking would ever be spent in making love.
But I was no longer touching her, and so she moved closer.
Alas! The breasts that I laid bare when I unfastened her straining bodice were like fruits of the Promised Land. There may be others as beautiful – I really couldn’t say. As for hers, I never saw them match their shape of that evening. Breasts are living beings; they have their infancy and their decline. I firmly believe that I saw hers in their fleeting moment of perfection.
Meanwhile she’d drawn out a scapular of new cloth from between them, and was kissing it piously whilst observing my emotion out of the corner of one half-closed eye.
“Well, do you like what you see?”
I took her in my arms again.
“No, not just yet.”
“Now what’s wrong?”
“I’m not in the mood, that’s all.”
*
And she did up her bodice.
I was suffering dreadfully; and now I was pleading with her, almost brutally, as I struggled against her hands, that had once more become protective. I could have caressed and ill-treated her at the same time. This stubborn insistence on both seducing me and spurning me, this little game that had been going on for a year already and that intensified at the decisive moment, just when I was expecting the final outcome, was simply trying my patience and undermining my tender feelings.
“My dear child,” I said, “you’re making fun of me, but take care lest I grow tired of it.”
“So that’s the way it is, eh? Well, in that case, you’ll get no love from me today, Don Mateo. Till tomorrow, then.”
“I won’t be coming back.”
“You’ll be back tomorrow.”
Furious, I put my hat on and left, fully determined never to see her again.
I kept my resolution until the moment I fell asleep, but on waking up next morning I felt utterly miserable.
Nor have I forgotten what a terrible day followed!
Despite my inward vow, I set off along the road to Seville. An irresistible force drew me towards her. I believed that my will had ceased to exist, and I no longer had any control over the direction in which my feet were taking me.
For three hours I struggled feverishly with myself as I paced up and down the calle Amor de Dios, the street behind the one Concha lived on, forever on the verge of crossing the twenty yards that separated me from her. Finally I triumphed. I left town almost at a run, without having banged on my beloved’s window. But what a wretched victory it was!
Next day, she was at my house.
“As you didn’t want to call on me, I’ve come round to see you myself,” she said. “So do you still say that I don’t love you?”
I could have thrown myself at her feet, sir.
“Quick now, show me your bedroom,” she added. “I don’t want you accusing me of indifference today. Do you imagine that I’m not just as impatient as you are? You’d certainly be surprised if you knew what I was really thinking.”
But as soon as she entered the room, she changed her mind:
“No, not this one, in fact. There’ve been too many women in this nasty bed already. It’s hardly a suitable room for a young virgin. Let’s try another one, shall we? A spare room that nobody uses.”
That meant having to wait for another hour, for the windows had to be opened, the bed made, and the room swept out.
At last everything was ready, and we went upstairs.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this time I felt absolutely certain of success, but I had my hopes, nonethe
less. After all, here she was, alone in my house, and fully aware of my feelings towards her, against which she had no means of protecting herself. It seemed unlikely that she’d have taken such a risk unless she’d already imagined herself making the sacrifice that she now claimed to be offering me.
As soon as we were alone, she unfastened her mantilla, which was attached to her hair and her bodice with fourteen pins, and then, quite simply, she started to undress. I must confess that instead of assisting her in this lengthy operation, I rather slowed things down, interrupting her a score of times in order to kiss her bare arms, her fleshy shoulders, her firm breasts and the dark brown nape of her neck. I watched her skin gradually appearing around the edges of her linen underclothing, telling myself that this rebellious young body was finally going to surrender to me.
“Well, have I kept my promise then?” she asked, pulling her chemise in tightly at the waist, as if wishing to emphasise the suppleness of her figure. “Close the blinds, will you? It’s horribly bright in here.”
I did as she asked; meanwhile she silently lay down in the middle of the large, deep mattress. I could see her through the white mosquito netting, looking like an apparition in a stage play behind a gauze curtain.
What more can I say, sir? As you’ve doubtless guessed, this time as well I was tricked and made to look ridiculous. I’ve already told you that this girl is the worst of women, and that her cruel inventiveness knows no bounds, but as yet you hardly know her. It’s only now, by following my story scene by scene, that you’re going to find out what Concha Pérez is really like.
So, she’d come to my house in order, she said, to give herself to me. You’ve heard her promises and her loving words. Right up to the very last moment she behaved like an amorous maiden who’s about to experience the delights of love; almost, in fact like a young bride receiving her husband for the first time – a bride far from ignorant, I grant you, but nevertheless solemn and apprehensive.
Well now, when getting dressed at home, the little wretch had rigged herself out in a pair of short drawers made from some sort of sailcloth that was so stiff and so strong that not even a bull’s horn could have broken through it, and which were tightly laced up around her waist and the middle of her thighs with knots of unassailable toughness and intricacy. And so that’s what I discovered, then, in the midst of my most violent longing, whilst that vile creature, without so much as turning a hair, explained:
“I’ll be as foolish as God wishes; but not as much as men desire!”
For a moment I thought I might strangle her, but then – and I’m not ashamed to admit it – I put my head in my hands and wept.
What I was weeping for, sir, was my own youth, whose irretrievable loss had just been proved to me by that child. Between the age of twenty-two and thirty-five there are certain humiliating affronts to which no man is ever subjected. I couldn’t believe that Concha would have treated me like that had I been ten years younger. As for those drawers, that barrier between love and me, I felt that henceforth all women would seem to be wearing a pair, or at least would wish for one before coming anywhere near my embrace.
“That’s enough,” I said. “I’ve understood. Now leave.”
But she suddenly became alarmed, and now it was her turn to enfold me in her sturdy little arms, which I had some difficulty in pushing away, as she sought for my lips, saying:
“My sweet, can’t you just be satisfied with loving everything I’ve already given you? You have my breasts and my lips, my burning legs and my fragrant hair – my entire body is yours to hold and caress, and you’ve my tongue when I kiss you. Isn’t that enough, all that? In that case, perhaps it’s not me that you love, but only what I refuse to let you have? Any woman can give you that, so why ask it of me, of someone who resists? Is it because you know I’m a virgin? I can think of others, even in Seville. I swear I can, Mateo. Ah! Come now, my darling – love me as I wish to be loved, by degrees, and be patient! You know that I’m yours, and that I’m keeping myself for you alone. What more do you want, my sweet?”
It was decided that we’d go on seeing each other, either at her house or at mine, and that she’d have her own way in everything. In return for a promise from me, she agreed not to put her hideous piece of canvas armour on again; but that was all that I obtained from her, and even so, the first night she didn’t wear it, it seemed to me that my torment was only intensified as a result.
Such, then, was the degree of servitude to which that child had reduced me. I won’t dwell on the incessant demands for money that punctuated her conversation and to which I always gave in – but even leaving that aside, the nature of our relationship is still of particular interest. Thus every night I held in my arms the naked body of a fifteen-year-old girl who may have been brought up by the nuns, but whose social status and moral disposition ruled out any idea of physical purity on her part. And yet this girl, in other respects as ardent and passionate as one could wish, behaved towards me as if nature itself had somehow prevented her from ever being able to satisfy her desires.
There could be no conceivable excuse for putting on such an act, and none was given. You’ll be able to guess the reason for this yourself, later on. Meanwhile I went on allowing myself be made a fool of in this way.
For make no mistake, my young French friend, reader of novels and participant, perhaps, in private intrigues with the dissolute virgins found in spa towns – when it comes to love, Andalusian women have neither taste nor instinct for anything that is in any way artificial. They’re wonderful lovers, but their senses are so keen that they’re unable to endure the shrill warbling of superfluous decoys without it driving them into a frenzy. Nothing ever happened between Concha and me, nothing at all. Do you understand what I’m saying? Nothing! And this went on for two whole weeks.
On the fifteenth day, as she’d received from me the night before the sum of five thousand pesetas to pay her mother’s debts, I found their house empty.
CHAPTER NINE
IN WHICH CONCHA PÉREZ UNDERGOES HER THIRD METAMORPHOSIS
It was too much.
Henceforth that cunning little hussy’s soul held no more secrets for me. I’d been thoroughly taken in, and it left me feeling even more ashamed than distressed.
Blotting the perfidious child out from my past life, I attempted to forget all about her overnight. It was one of those paradoxical intentions whose inevitable failure women always anticipate.
I left for Madrid, determined to take as my mistress the first attractive young woman who should chance to catch my eye.
It’s the classic stratagem, one that everybody hits upon, and that never succeeds.
My search took me from salon to salon, and then from theatre to theatre. In the end I found an Italian dancer, a big girl with muscular legs who’d have been an extremely handsome addition to someone’s harem, but who certainly didn’t possess the qualities one’s looking for in one’s sole intimate lady friend.
She did her best. She was affectionate and easy-going. She taught me various Neapolitan vices with which I was unfamiliar and which she enjoyed more than I did. I could see that she was doing her utmost to keep me with her, and that concern for her material wellbeing wasn’t the only reason for her fierce, loving devotion.
Alas! If only I could have loved her! I’d nothing to complain of as far as she was concerned. She was neither unfaithful nor importunate. She seemed to be unaware of my failings. She didn’t cause me to fall out with my friends. And finally, her jealousies, though frequent, were only hinted at, and never openly expressed. Such a woman cannot be appreciated too highly.
But I felt nothing for her whatsoever.
For two months I forced myself to live under the same roof as Giulia, sharing the air she breathed as well as the room she occupied in the house that I’d rented for us both at one end of the calle Lope de Vega. But I didn’t so much as look at her when she came in, walked about, or even passed right in front of me; nor did the sight of the pettico
ats, dancer’s tights, drawers and chemises, that lay strewn about over the sofas, stir me in any way. For sixty nights I saw her dark brown body stretched out beside mine in an oppressively close bed in which, as soon as the light was out, I imagined another’s presence.
Finally, in self-despair, I fled.
I returned to Seville. My house seemed to have a sepulchral air about it. I left for Granada, where I got bored; for Cordoba, which was torrid and deserted; for dazzling Jerez, everywhere redolent of its wine cellars; for Cadiz, an oasis of dwellings set in the sea.
Throughout this trip, sir, I was guided from town to town not by my own fancy, but as one in the grip of a distant and irresistible enchantment, in which I believe as firmly as I do in the existence of God. I’ve run into Concha Pérez four times now in this vast country, and it hasn’t just been a series of chance encounters. I don’t believe in those rolls of the dice that are supposed to govern our destiny. I had to fall into that woman’s clutches again, just as I had to go through everything that you’re going to hear about.
And, indeed, it all took place just as fate had decreed.
*
* *
It happened in Cadiz.
One evening I entered the local baile, or dance hall, and there she was, sir, dancing in front of thirty-odd fishermen, as many sailors, and a few stupid foreigners.
As soon as I saw her, I began to tremble. I must have looked as white as a sheet, and I felt winded and drained of strength. I sat down on the nearest bench, which was next to the door and, putting my elbows on the table, I gazed at her from afar, as at someone who’d risen from the dead.
