Tristana (12 page)

YES, THE
present moment was, indeed, easy and nice, and Horacio was deliriously happy in it, as if he had been transported to a corner of the eternal glory. He was, however, a serious man, brought up in thoughtful solitude and in the habit of gauging everything as a way of foreseeing how things might turn out. He wasn’t the kind of man so easily intoxicated by joy that he would fail to see its reverse side. His clear understanding allowed him to analyze himself keenly and to examine his immutable self regardless of what deliriums or storms assailed it. The first thing he encountered during that analysis was the irresistibly seductive effect that this young Japanese lady exercised over him, a phenomenon that was like a sweet illness of which he did not wish to be cured. He considered it impossible to live without her multiple attractions, her ineffable sweetness, without the one thousand fascinating forms in which the divinity had clothed herself when she took on human shape. He was charmed by her modesty when she was humble and by her pride when she grew angry. He was as enchanted by her wild enthusiasms as by her disappointments or sorrows. She was as delicious when cheerful as when she was annoyed. She possessed innumerable gifts and qualities, some serious, others frivolous and worldly; sometimes her intelligence judged everything with searing clarity, at other times with seductive absurdity. She could be sweet and sour, soft and cool as water, hot as fire, vague and murmurous as the air. She would invent amusing pranks, donning the clothes worn by his models and improvising monologues or whole plays in which she played two or even three characters; she would give witty discourses or mimic old Don Lope; in short, she was the embodiment of such talent and such wit that Horacio, who was hopelessly in love, thought that his young friend was a compendium of all the gifts bestowed on mortal beings.

In the field, if one can call it that, of loving tenderness, Tristana was equally prodigious. She was able to find ever new ways of expressing her affection; she could be sweet without being sickly, guileless without being insipid, bold without a hint of corruption, and the first and most visible of her infinite graces was her utter sincerity. And seeing in her something that hinted at the precious virtue of constancy, Horacio believed that their mutual passion would last all their lives and possibly beyond, because, as a genuine believer, he did not think that his ideal would be plunged into the dark by death.

In the midst of all this eternal passion and growing ardor, art was the loser. In the morning, Horacio would amuse himself painting flowers or dead animals. His lunch would be brought up to him from the Café del Riojano, and he would devour it hungrily, arranging any leftovers on one of the tables in the studio. The latter was a delightfully untidy place, and the concierge, who tried to restore order each morning, only added to the confusion and disorder. There were piles of books on the wide divan and a blanket from Morella; on the floor lay boxes of paint, flowerpots, and dead partridges; on the bentwood chairs sat unfinished paintings, more books, and portfolios of prints; in the small adjoining room, which served as bathroom and storeroom, there were more small paintings, a water jug full of foliage cut from bushes, one of Tristana’s dressing gowns hanging from a hook, and, scattered everywhere, beautiful costumes: a white woolen Moorish cloak, a Japanese robe, masks, gloves, and embroidered frock coats, wigs, harem slippers, and Roman peasant girls’ aprons. The walls were adorned with chasubles and Greek masks made of cardboard, along with hundreds of portraits and photographs of horses, ships, dogs, and bulls.

After lunch, Díaz waited for half an hour and, when his beloved did not appear, he grew impatient and, to pass the time, sat down to read Leopardi. He knew Italian perfectly, for his mother had taught him, and although under his grandfather’s long tyranny, he had forgotten a few turns of phrase, the roots of that knowledge lived on in him, and in Venice, Rome, and Naples, he had become so proficient that he could easily pass for an Italian anywhere, even in Italy itself. Dante was his one literary passion. He could recite, without forgetting a single line, whole cantos of the
Inferno
and
Purgatory
. Needless to say, almost without intending to, he gave his young friend lessons in
il bel parlare
. With her prodigious assimilatory powers, Tristana mastered the pronunciation in a matter of days and simply by reading occasionally as if for her own amusement and hearing him read too, within a fortnight she was reciting, with the admirable intonation of a consummate actress, the famous passages about Francesca, Ugolino, and others.

As I was saying, Horacio was whiling away the time reading that melancholic poet from Recanati and had paused to ponder the profound thought
E discoprendo, solo il nulla s’accresce
,
*
when, hearing the light steps he was longing to hear, he immediately forgot all about Leopardi and cared little whether
il nulla
grew or shrank.

Thank heavens! Tristana entered with a childlike agility undiminished even by the weariness of climbing that interminable staircase, and she ran straight to him and embraced him as if she had not seen him for a year.

“My love, my sweet, my joy, my dauber, what a long time it seems since yesterday! I was longing to see you again. Have you been thinking about me? I bet you didn’t dream about me as I did of you. I dreamed that . . . no, I won’t tell you. I want to make you suffer.”

“You’re worse than a fever, you are! Give me those luscious lips of yours, if you don’t, I’ll strangle you!”

“Tyrant, pirate, gypsy!” she cried and fell, exhausted, onto the divan. You’re not going to get around me with your
parlare onesto
. . .
Sella el labio
. . .
Denantes que del sol la crencha rubia
. . . Goodness me, what nonsense I talk! Pay no attention. I’m mad, and that’s entirely your fault. Oh, I have so many things to tell you,
carino
! Italian is so beautiful, so sweet, how pleasing to the soul it is to say
mio diletto
! I want you to teach me properly so that I can be a teacher too. But to business. Before we do anything else, answer me this: “
Shall we scarper?
”

It was clear from this mixture of street jargon and Italian words, along with other oddities of style that will emerge later on, that they shared a special lovers’ vocabulary composed of all kinds of words culled from picaresque anecdotes or jokes, or from some very serious literary passage or famous line of poetry. It is precisely such accidental linguistic encounters that enrich the family dictionary of those who live in an absolute communion of ideas and feelings. The phrase “shall we scarper” came from a story Saturna had told her, and was a cheerful way of referring to their plans to run away together; and Tristana’s habit of never addressing him by his name, but as Señó Juan—a coarse, ill-tempered gypsy—came from a funny tale Horacio had told her. Putting on the gruffest voice she could manage, Tristana would seize him by the ear and say, “So, Señó Juan, do you love me?”

He rarely called Tristana by her real name either. She was either Beatrice or Francesca,
†
or else la Paca de Rimini, or even Chispa or Señá Restituta. These nicknames, grotesque terms, or lyrical expressions, which lent savor to their passionate conversations, changed every few days, depending on the anecdotes they told each other.

“We can scarper whenever you wish, my dear Restituta,” answered Horacio. “That is my one desire. A man can only take so much ecstatic love. Let us go: ‘Why waste time? The dapple-gray mare which, as you say, graces the fields . . .’ ”
‡

“Abroad, I will abroad!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands. “I want us both to be foreigners somewhere so that we can walk around, arm in arm, without anyone knowing who we are.”

“Yes, my love.
What a joy it is to see you!
”

“Among the French,” she sang, “and among the English . . . I don’t think I can stand my own personal Tyrant of Syracuse for very much longer. Saturna calls him Don Lepe,
§
and so that’s what I call him too. He’s trying very hard to look pathetic. He barely speaks to me, which I don’t mind at all. He’s putting on an act, hoping that I’ll feel sorry for him. He was very chatty last night, though, and regaled me with some of his ‘adventures.’ The rogue probably thinks he can impress me with such examples, but he’s wrong. I can’t stand the sight of him. Oh, there are days when I feel sorry for him, but on others, I loathe him, and last night I loathed him, because when he was telling me about his sordid escapades—they would make your hair stand on end—I sensed a depraved intention on his part to excite my imagination. He’s a sly dog. I felt like telling him that the only ‘adventure’ I’m interested in is my own adventure with my beloved Señó Juan, whom I adore with all my ‘irrational powers.’ ”

“You know, I would rather like to hear Don Lope recounting his amorous tales.”

“They’re pretty good. The one about the Marquesa del Cabañal is the funniest of all! She was led to Don Lepe by her own husband, who was more jealous than Othello himself. But I think I’ve told you that one before. Then there was the nun he kidnapped from the convent of San Pablo in Toledo. And that same year, he killed a man in a duel, a general who claimed his wife was the most virtuous woman in Spain; said wife promptly eloped with Don Lope to Barcelona, where he had seven affairs in a month, each one of them worthy of a novel. He must have something about him, and he doesn’t lack for courage either.”

“Don’t get too excited about your Don Juan, Restituta.”

“The only man I get excited about is my dauber here. I have such bad taste! Look at those eyes—so ugly, so dull! And that mouth? It makes one sick to look at it, and those clothes, so inelegant! I don’t know how I can bear to look at you! No, it’s too much. Get out of my sight this instant!”

“And what about you? With those huge tusks of yours and that beetroot of a nose and that barrel of a body! Your fingers are like pincers!”

“All the better to tear off your donkey pelt strip by strip. Why are you so ugly!
Gran Dio, morir si giovine
.”
¶

“Ah, my angel, lovelier than all the Holy Fathers and more bewitching by far than the Council of Trent and Don Alfonso the Wise . . . Do you know what I have just thought? What if your Don Lepe were to come through that door right now?”

“Oh, you don’t know Don Lepe. He would never come here, he wouldn’t play the jealous husband for all the money in the world. Apart from having seduced a lot of more or less virtuous women, he is the very epitome of dignity.”

“And what if I were to go to your house at night and he were to find me there?”

“Then, purely as a preventative measure, he might well slice you in two or turn your skull into a box in which to store the bullets from his revolver. He may be a gentleman to his fingertips, but if someone were to touch a raw nerve, he could react very violently. So it would be best not to go. I don’t know how he found out about us, but he did. The rascal knows about everything, well, he’s as wise as a wily old dog and has long experience as a master of naughtiness. Yesterday, he remarked very sarcastically: ‘So we’ve found ourselves a little artist, have we?’ I didn’t answer. I pay no attention. One fine day, he’ll arrive home and find that the bird has flown.
Ahi Pisa, vituperio de le genti!
**
Where shall we go, my love?
A dó
will you take me?
La ci darem la mano
. . .
††
I know I’m not making any sense. Ideas rush pell-mell into my head, arguing about who should go first, rather as if lots of people were trying to leave church at once and got stuck in the doorway and . . . Oh, just love me, love me profusely, for everything else is mere noise. Sometimes I have sad ideas, for example, that I will end up very unhappy and see all my dreams of happiness go up in smoke. That’s why I cling to the idea of gaining my independence and doing something with whatever talent I may have. If I really do have a gift, why shouldn’t I put it to good use, just as other women exploit their beauty or their grace?”

“That is a most noble wish,” said Horacio thoughtfully. “But don’t be in such a hurry, don’t cling too hard to that ambition, because it might prove impracticable. Give yourself unreservedly to me. Be my life’s companion; help and sustain me with your love. Could there be a more beautiful trade or art? Making happy the man who will make you happy? What more could you want?”

“What more could I want?” she asked, staring down at the floor. “
Diverse lingue, orribile favelle
. . .
parole di dolore, accenti d’ira
. . .
‡‡
Not that I’m comparing, of course . . . Señó Juan, do you really love me? You asked me: ‘What more?’ Well, nothing more. I will accept that there is nothing more. I warn you, though, that I’m an absolute disaster as a housewife. I get everything wrong and I’ll cause you all kinds of upsets. And I’m an equally perfect treasure, too, when it comes to shopping and other such women’s business. I need only tell you that I don’t know the names of the streets and can’t go out alone without getting lost! The other day, I couldn’t even manage to get from Puerta del Sol to Calle de Peligros, found myself heading off in completely the wrong direction and ended up in Plaza de la Cebada. I have no sense of direction at all. That same day, I bought some hairpins at the market, gave the stallholder five pesetas, and forgot to take the change. By the time I realized my mistake, I was already on the tram . . . I even caught the wrong tram and got one going to El Barrio. From all these things and something else that I observe in myself, I deduce . . . But tell me what you’re thinking about? Will you really never love anyone more than you love your Paquita de Rimini? I’ll say it again . . . No, I won’t.”

“Finish your sentence,” he said, feeling rather uncomfortable. “I must cure you of that annoying habit of never finishing a thought.”

“Beat me, beat me, then . . . break a rib or two. You have such a temper! ‘Nor golden ceiling made by the wise Moor and supported on pillars of jasper . . .’ No, that doesn’t make sense either.”