Kitabı oku: «Mare Nostrum (Our Sea)», sayfa 23
CHAPTER X
IN BARCELONA
Four months later Captain Ferragut was in Barcelona.
During the interval he had made three trips to Salonica, and on the second had to appear before a naval captain of the army of the Orient. The French officer was informed of his former expeditions for the victualing of the allied troops. He knew his name and looked upon him as does a judge interested in the accused. He had received from Marseilles a long telegram with reference to Ferragut. A spy submitted to military justice was accusing him of having carried supplies to the German submarines.
"How about that, Captain?…"
Ulysses hesitated, looking at the official's grave face, framed by a grey beard. This man inspired his confidence. He could respond negatively to such questions; it would be difficult for the German to prove his affirmation; but he preferred to tell the truth, with the simplicity of one who does not try to hide his faults, describing himself just as he had been,—blind with lust, dragged down by the amorous artifices of an adventuress.
"The women!… Ah, the women!" murmured the French chief with the melancholy smile of a magistrate who does not lose sight of human weaknesses and has participated in them.
Nevertheless Ferragut's transgression was of gravest importance. He had aided in staging the submarine attack in the Mediterranean…. But when the Spanish captain related how he had been one of the first victims, how his son had died in the torpedoing of the Californian, the judge appeared touched, looking at him less severely.
Then Ferragut related his encounter with the spy in the harbor of Marseilles.
"I have sworn," he said finally, "to devote my ship and my life to causing all the harm possible to the murderers of my son…. That man is denouncing me in order to avenge himself. I realize that my headlong blindness dragged me to a crime that I shall never forget. I am sufficiently punished in the death of my son…. But that does not matter; let them sentence me, too."
The chief remained sunk in deep reflection, forehead in hand and elbow on the table. Ferragut recognized here military justice, expeditious, intuitive, passional, attentive to the sentiments that have scarcely any weight in other tribunals, judging by the action of conscience more than by the letter of the law, and capable of shooting a man with the same dispatch that he would employ in setting him at liberty.
When the eyes of the judge again fixed themselves upon him, they had an indulgent light. He had been guilty, not on account of money nor treason, but crazed by a woman. Who has not something like this in his own history?… "Ah, the women!" repeated the Frenchman, as though lamenting the most terrible form of enslavement…. But the victim had already suffered enough in the loss of his son. Besides, they owed to him the discovery and arrest of an important spy.
"Your hand, Captain," he concluded, holding out his own. "All that we have said will be just between ourselves. It is a sacred, confessional secret. I will arrange it with the Council of War…. You may continue lending your services to our cause."
And Ferragut was not annoyed further about the affair of Marseilles. Perhaps they were watching him discreetly and keeping sight of him in order to convince themselves of his entire innocence; but this suspected vigilance never made itself felt nor occasioned him any trouble.
On the third trip to Salonica the French captain saw him once at a distance, greeting him with a grave smile which showed that he no longer was thinking of him as a possible spy.
Upon its return, the Mare Nostrum anchored at Barcelona to take on cloth for the army service, and other industrial articles of which the troops of the Orient stood in need. Ferragut did not make this trip for mercantile reasons. An affectionate interest was drawing him there…. He needed to see Cinta, feeling that in his soul the past was again coming to life.
The image of his wife, vivacious and attractive, as in the early years of their marriage, kept rising before him. It was not a resurrection of the old love; that would have been impossible…. But his remorse made him see her, idealized by distance, with all her qualities of a sweet and modest woman.
He wished to reëstablish the cordial relations of other times, to have all the past pardoned, so that she would no longer look at him with hatred, believing him responsible for the death of her son.
In reality she was the only woman who had loved him sincerely, as she was able to love, without violence or passional exaggeration, and with the tranquillity of a comrade. The other women no longer existed. They were a troop of shadows that passed through his memory like specters of visible shape but without color. As for that last one, that Freya whom bad luck had put in his way—… How the captain hated her! How he wished to meet her and return a part of the harm she had done him!…
Upon seeing his wife, Ulysses imagined that no time had passed by. He found her just as at parting, with her two nieces seated at her feet, making interminable, complicated blonde lace upon the cylindrical pillows supported on their knees.
The only novelty of the captain's stay in this dwelling of monastic calm was that Don Pedro abstained from his visits. Cinta received her husband with a pallid smile. In that smile he suspected the work of time. She had continued thinking of her son every hour, but with a resignation that was drying her tears and permitting her to continue the deliberate mechanicalness of existence. Furthermore, she wished to remove the impression of the angry words, inspired by grief,—the remembrance of that scene of rebellion in which she had arisen like a wrathful accuser against the father. And Ferragut for some days believed that he was living just as in past years when he had not yet bought the Mare Nostrum and was planning to remain always ashore. Cinta was attentive to his wishes and obedient as a Christian wife ought to be. Her words and acts revealed a desire to forget, to make herself agreeable.
But something was lacking that had made the past so sweet. The cordiality of youth could not be resuscitated. The remembrance of the son was always intervening between the two, hardly ever leaving their thoughts. And so it would always be!
Since that house could no longer be a real home to him, he again began to await impatiently the hour of sailing. His destiny was to live henceforth on the ship, to pass the rest of his days upon the waves like the accursed captain of the Dutch legend, until the pallid virgin wrapped in black veils—Death—should come to rescue him.
While the steamer finished loading he strolled through the city visiting his cousins, the manufacturers, or remaining idly in the cafés. He looked with interest on the human current passing through the Ramblas in which were mingled the natives of the country and the picturesque and absurd medley brought in by the war.
The first thing that Ferragut noticed was the visible diminution of German refugees.
Months before he had met them everywhere, filling the hotels and monopolizing the cafés,—their green hats and open-neck shirts making them recognized immediately. The German women in showy and extravagant gowns, were everywhere kissing each other when meeting, and talking in shrieks. The German tongue, confounded with the Catalan and the Castilian, seemed to have become naturalized. On the roads and mountains could be seen rows of bare-throated boys with heads uncovered, staff in hand, and Alpine knapsack on the back, occupying their leisure with pleasure excursions that were at the same time, perhaps, a foresighted study.
These Germans had all come from South America,—especially from Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. From Barcelona they had, at the beginning of the war, tried to return to their own country but were now interned, unable to continue their voyage for fear of the French and English cruisers patrolling the Mediterranean.
At first no one had wished to take the trouble to settle down in this land, and they had all clustered together in sight of the sea with the hope of being the first to embark at the very moment that the road of navigation might open for them.
The war was going to be very short…. Exceedingly short! The Kaiser and his irresistible army would require but six months to impose their rule upon all Europe. The Germans enriched by commerce were lodged in the hotels. The poor who had been working in the new world as farmers or shop clerks were quartered in a slaughter house on the outskirts. Some, who were musicians, had acquired old instruments and, forming strolling street bands, were imploring alms for their roarings from village to village.
But the months were passing by, the war was being prolonged, and nobody could now discern the end. The number of those taking arms against the medieval imperialism of Berlin was constantly growing greater, and the German refugees, finally convinced that their wait was going to be a very long one, were scattering themselves through the interior of the state, hunting a more satisfying and less expensive existence. Those who had been living in luxurious hotels were establishing themselves in villas and chalets of the suburbs; the poor, tired of the rations of the slaughter-house, were exerting themselves to find jobs in the public works of the interior.
Many were still remaining in Barcelona, meeting together in certain beer gardens to read the home periodicals and talk mysteriously of the works of war.
Ferragut recognized them at once upon passing them in the Rambla. Some were dealers, traders established for a long time in the country, bragging of their Catalan connections with that lying facility of adaptability peculiar to their race. Others came from South America and were associated with those in Barcelona by the free-masonry of comradeship and patriotic interest. But they were all Germans, and that was enough to make the captain immediately recall his son, planning bloody vengeance. He sometimes wished to have in his arm all the blind forces of Nature in order to blot out his enemies with one blow. It annoyed him to see them established in his country, to have to pass them daily without protest and without aggression, respecting them because the laws demanded it.
He used to like to stroll among the flower stands of the Rambla, between the two walls of recently-cut flowers that were still guarding in their corollas the dews of daybreak. Each iron table was a pyramid formed of all the hues of the rainbow and all the fragrance that the earth can bring forth.
The fine weather was beginning. The trees of the Ramblas were covering themselves with leaves and in their shady branches were twittering thousands of birds with the deafening tenacity of the crickets.
The captain found special enjoyment in surveying the ladies in lace mantillas who were selecting bouquets in the refreshing atmosphere. No situation, however anguished it might be, ever left him insensible to feminine attractions.
One morning, passing slowly through the crowds, he noticed that a woman was following him. Several times she crossed his path, smiling at him, hunting a pretext for beginning conversation. Such insistence was not particularly gratifying to his pride; for she was a female of protruding bust and swaying hips, a cook with a basket on her arm, like many others who were passing through the Rambla in order to add a bunch of flowers to the daily purchase of eatables.
Finding that the sailor was not moved by her smiles nor the glances from her sharp eyes, she planted herself before him, speaking to him in Catalan.
"Excuse me, sir, but are you not a ship captain named Don Ulysses?…"
This started the conversation. The cook, convinced that it was he, continued talking with a mysterious smile. A most beautiful lady was desirous of seeing him…. And she gave him the address of a towered villa situated at the foot of Tibidabo in a recently constructed district. He could make his visit at three in the afternoon.
"Come, sir," she added with a look of sweet promise. "You will never regret the trip."
All questions were useless. The woman would say no more. The only thing that could be gathered from her evasive answers was that the person sending her had left her upon seeing the captain.
When the messenger had gone away he wished to follow her. But the fat old wife shook her head repeatedly. Her astuteness was quite accustomed to eluding pursuit, and without Ferragut's knowing exactly how, she slipped away, mingling with the groups near the Plaza of Catalunia.
"I shall not go," was the first thing that Ferragut said on finding himself alone.
He knew just what that invitation signified. He recalled an infinite number of former unconfessable friendships that he had had in Barcelona,—women that he had met in other times, between voyages, without any passion whatever, but through his vagabond curiosity, anxious for novelty. Perhaps some one of these had seen him in the Rambla, sending this intermediary in order to renew the old relations. The captain probably enjoyed the fame of a rich man now that everybody was commenting upon the amazingly good business transacted by the proprietors of ships.
"I shall not go," he again told himself energetically. He considered it useless to bother about this interview, to encounter the mercenary smile of a familiar but forgotten acquaintance.
But the insistence of the recollection and the very tenacity with which he kept repeating to himself his promise not to keep the tryst, made Ferragut begin to suspect that it might be just as well to go after all.
After luncheon his will-power weakened. He didn't know what to do with himself during the afternoon. His only distraction was to visit his cousins in their counting-houses, or to meander through the Rambla. Why not go?… Perhaps he might be mistaken, and the interview might prove an interesting one. At all events, he would have the chance of retiring after a brief conversation about the past…. His curiosity was becoming excited by the mystery.
And at three in the afternoon he took a street car that conducted him to the new districts springing up around the base of Tibidabo.
The commercial bourgeoisie had covered these lands with an architectural efflorescence, legitimate daughter of their dreams. Shopkeepers and manufacturers had wished to have here a pleasure house, traditionally called a torre, in order to rest on Sundays and at the same time make a show of their wealth with these Gothic, Arabic, Greek, and Persian creations. The most patriotic were relying on the inspiration of native architects who had invented a Catalan art with pointed arches, battlements, and ducal coronets. These medieval coronets, which were repeated even on the peaks of the chimney pots, were the everlasting decorative motif of an industrial city little given to dreams and lusting for lucre.
Ferragut advanced through the solitary street between two rows of freshly transplanted trees that were just sending forth their first growth. He looked at the façades of the torres made of blocks of cement imitating the stone of the old fortresses, or with tiles which represented fantastic landscapes, absurd flowers, bluish, glazed nymphs.
Upon getting out of the street car he made a resolution. He would look at the outside only of the house. Perhaps that would aid him in discovering the woman! Then he would just continue on his way.
But on reaching the torre, whose number he still kept in mind, and pausing a few seconds before its architecture of a feudal castle whose interior was probably like that of the beer gardens, he saw the door opening, and appearing in it the same woman that had talked with him in the flower Rambla.
"Come in, Captain."
And the captain was not able to resist the suggestive smile of the cook.
He found himself in a kind of hall similar to the façade with a Gothic fireplace of alabaster imitating oak, great jars of porcelain, pipes the size of walking-sticks, and old armor adorning the walls. Various wood-cuts reproducing modern pictures of Munich alternated with these decorations. Opposite the fireplace William II was displaying one of his innumerable uniforms, resplendent in gold and a gaudy frame.
The house appeared uninhabited. Heavy soft curtains deadened every sound. The corpulent go-between had disappeared with the lightness of an immaterial being, as though swallowed up by the wall. While scowling at the portrait of the Kaiser, the sailor began to feel disquieted in this silence which appeared to him almost hostile…. And he was not carrying arms.
The smiling woman again presented herself with the same slippery smoothness.
"Come in, Don Ulysses."
She had opened a door, and Ferragut on advancing felt that this door was locked behind him.
The first thing that he could see was a window, broader than it was high, of colored glass. A Valkyrie was galloping across it, with lance in rest and floating locks, upon a black steed that was expelling fire through its nostrils. In the diffused light of the stained glass he could distinguish tapestries on the walls and a deep divan with flowered cushions.
A woman arose from the soft depths of this couch, rushing towards Ferragut with outstretched arms. Her impulse was so violent that it made her collide with the captain. Before the feminine embrace could close around him he saw a panting mouth, with avid teeth, eyes tearful with emotion, a smile that was a mixture of love and painful disquietude.
"You!… You!" he stuttered, springing back.
His legs trembled with a shudder of surprise. A cold wave ran down his back.
"Ulysses!" sighed the woman, trying again to fold him in her arms.
"You!… You!" again repeated the sailor in a dull voice.
It was Freya.
He did not know positively what mysterious force dictated his action. It was perhaps the voice of his good counselor, accustomed to speak in his brain in critical instants, which now asserted itself…. He saw instantaneously a ship that was exploding and his son blown to pieces.
"Ah … tal"
He raised his robust arm with his fist clenched like a mace. The voice of prudence kept on giving him orders. "Hard!… No consideration!… This female is shifty." And he struck as though his enemy were a man, without hesitation, without pity, concentrating all his soul in his fist.
The hatred that he was feeling and the recollection of the aggressive resources of the German woman made him begin a second blow, fearing an attack from her and wishing to repel it before it could be made…. But he stopped with his arm raised.
"Ay de mí!…"
The woman had uttered a child-like wail, staggering, swaying upon her feet, with arms drooping, without any attempt at defense whatever…. She reeled from side to side as though she were drunk. Her knees doubled under her, and she fell with the limpness of a bundle of clothes, her head first striking against the cushions of the divan. The rest of her body remained like a rag on the rug.
There was a long silence, interrupted from time to time by groans of pain. Freya was moaning with closed eyes, without coming out of her inertia.
The sailor, scowling with a tragic ugliness, and transported with rage, remained immovable, looking grimly at the fallen creature. He was satisfied with his brutality; it had been an opportune relief; he could breathe better. At the same time he was beginning to feel ashamed of himself. "What have you done, you coward?…" For the first time in his existence he had struck a woman.
He raised his aching right hand to his eyes. One of his fingers was bleeding. Perhaps it had become hooked in her earrings, perhaps a pin at her breast had scratched it. He sucked the blood from the deep scratch, and then forgot the wound in order to gaze again at the body outstretched at his feet.
Little by little he was becoming accustomed to the diffused light of the room. He was already beginning to see objects clearly. His glance rested upon Freya with a look of mingled hatred and remorse.
Her head, sunk in the cushions, presented a pitiful profile. She appeared much older, as though her age had been doubled by her tears. The brutal blow had made her freshness and her marvelous youth flit away with doleful suddenness. Her half-opened eyes were encircled with temporary wrinkles. Her nose had taken on the livid sharpness of the dead; her great mass of hair, reddening under the blow, was disheveled in golden, undulating tangles. Something black was winding through it making streaks upon the silk of the cushion. It was the blood that was dribbling between the heraldic flowers of the embroidery,—blood flowing from the hidden forehead, being absorbed by the dryness of the soft material.
Upon making this discovery, Ferragut felt his shame increasing. He took one step over the extended body, seeking the door. Why was he staying there?… All that he had to do was already done; all that he could say was already said.
"Do not go, Ulysses," sighed a plaintive voice. "Listen to me!… It concerns your life."
The fear that he might get away made her pull herself together with dolorous groans and this movement accelerated the flow of blood…. The pillow continued drinking it in like a thirsty meadow.
An irresistible compassion like that which he might feel for any stranger abandoned in the midst of the street, made the sailor draw back, his eyes fixed on a tall crystal vase which stood upon the floor filled with flowers. With a bang he scattered over the carpet all the springtime bouquet, arranged a little while before by feminine hands with the feverishness of one who counts the minutes and lives on hope.
He moistened his handkerchief in the water of the vase and knelt down beside Freya, raising her head upon the cushion. She let the wound be washed with the abandon of a sick creature, fixing upon her aggressor a pair of imploring eyes, opening now for the first time.
When the blood ceased to flow, forming on the temple a red, coagulated spot, Ferragut tried to raise her up.
"No; leave me so," she murmured. "I prefer to be at your feet. I am your bondslave … your plaything. Beat me more if it will appease your wrath."
She wished to insist upon her humility, offering her lips with the timid kiss of a grateful slave.
"Ah, no!… No!"
To avoid this caress Ulysses stood up suddenly. He again felt intense hatred toward this woman, who little by little was appealing to his senses. Upon stopping the flow of blood his compassion had become extinguished.
She, guessing his thoughts, felt obliged to speak.
"Do with me what you will…. I shall not complain. You are the first man who has ever struck me…. And I have not defended myself! I shall not defend myself though you strike me again…. Had it been any one else, I would have replied blow for blow; but you!… I have done you so much wrong!…"
She was silent for a few moments, kneeling before him in a supplicating attitude with her body resting upon her heels. She reached out her arms while speaking with a monotonous and sorrowful voice, like the specters in the apparitions of the theater.
"I have hesitated a long time before seeing you," she continued. "I feared your wrath; I was sure that in the first moment you would let yourself be overpowered by your anger and I was terrified at the thought of the interview…. I have spied upon you ever since I knew that you were in Barcelona; I have waited near your home; many times I have seen you through the doorway of a café, and I have taken my pen to write to you. But I feared that you would not come, upon recognizing my handwriting, or that you would pay no attention to a letter in another hand…. This morning in the Rambla I could no longer contain myself. And so I sent that woman to you and I have passed some cruel hours fearing that you would not come…. At last I see you and your violence makes no difference to me. Thank you, thank you many times for having come!"
Ferragut remained motionless with distracted glance, as though he did not hear her voice.
"It was necessary to see you," she continued. "It concerns your very existence. You have set yourself in opposition to a tremendous power that can crush you. Your ruin is decided upon. You are one lone man and you have awakened the suspicion, without knowing it, of a world-wide organization…. The blow has not yet fallen upon you, but it is going to fall at any moment, perhaps this very day; I cannot find out all about it…. For this reason it was necessary to see you in order that you should put yourself on the defensive, in order that you should flee, if necessary."
The captain, smiling scornfully, shrugged his shoulders as he always did when people spoke to him of danger, and counseled prudence. Besides, he couldn't believe a single thing that woman said.
"It's a lie!" he said dully. "It's all a lie!…
"No, Ulysses: listen to me. You do not know the interest that you inspire in me. You are the only man that I have ever loved… Do not smile at me in that way: your incredulity terrifies me…. Remorse is now united to my poor love. I have done you so much wrong!… I hate all men. I long to cause them all the harm that I can; but there exists one exception: you!… All my desires of happiness are for you. My dreams of the future always have you as the central personage…. Do you want me to remain indifferent upon seeing you in danger?… No, I am not lying…. Everything that I tell you this afternoon is the truth: I shall never be able to lie to you. It distresses me so that my artifices and my falsity should have brought trouble upon you…. Strike me again, treat me as the worst of women, but believe what I tell you; follow my counsel."
The sailor persisted disdainfully in his indifferent attitude. His hands were trembling impatiently. He was going away. He did not wish to hear any more…. Had she hunted him out just to frighten him with imaginary dangers?…
"What have you done, Ulysses?… What have you done?" Freya kept saying desperately.
She knew all that had occurred in the port of Marseilles, and she also knew well the infinite number of agents that were working for the greater glory of Germany. Von Kramer, from his prison, had made known the name of his informant. She lamented the captain's vehement frankness.
"I understand your hatred; you cannot forget the torpedoing of the Californian…. But you should have denounced von Kramer without letting him suspect from whom the accusation came…. You have acted like a madman; yours is an impulsive character that does not fear the morrow."
Ulysses made a scornful gesture. He did not like subterfuges and treachery. His way of doing was the better one. The only thing that he lamented was that that assassin of the sea might still be living, not having been able to kill him with his own hands.
"Perhaps he may not be living still," she continued. "The French Council of War has condemned him to death. We do not know whether the sentence has been carried out; but they are going to shoot him any moment, and every one in our circle knows that you are the true author of his misfortune."
She became terrified upon thinking of the accumulated hatred brought about by this deed, and upon the approaching vengeance. In Berlin the name of Ferragut was the object of special attention; in every nation of the earth, the civilian battalions of men and women engaged in working for Germany's triumph were repeating his name at this moment. The commanders of the submarines were passing along information regarding his ship and his person. He had dared to attack the greatest empire in the world. He, one lone man, a simple merchant captain, depriving the kaiser of one of his most valiant, valuable servants!
"What have you done, Ulysses?… What have you done?" she wailed again.
And Ferragut began to recognize in her voice a genuine interest in his person, a terrible fear of the dangers which she believed were threatening him.
"Here, in your very own country, their vengeance will overtake you. Flee! I don't know where you can go to get rid of them, but believe me…. Flee!"
The sailor came out of his scornful indifference. Anger was lending a hostile gleam to his glance. He was furious to think that those foreigners could pursue him in his own country; it was as though they were attacking him beside his own hearth. National pride augmented his wrath.
"Let them come," he said. "I'd like to see them this very day."
And he looked around, clenching his fists as though these innumerable and unknown enemies were about to come out from the walls.
"They are also beginning to consider me as an enemy," continued the woman. "They do not say so, because it is a common thing with us to hide our thoughts; but I suspect the coldness that is surrounding me…. The doctor knows that I love you the same as before, in spite of the wrath that she feels against you. The others are talking of your 'treason' and I protest because I cannot stand such a lie…. Why are you a traitor?… You are not one of our clan. You are a father who longs to avenge himself. We are the real traitors:—I, who entangled you in the fatal adventure,—they, who pushed me toward you, in order to take advantage of your services."
Their life in Naples surged up in her memory and she felt it necessary to explain her acts.
"You have not been able to understand me. You are ignorant of the truth…. When I met you on the road to Paestum, you were a souvenir of my past, a fragment of my youth, of the time in which I knew the doctor only vaguely, and was not yet compromised in the service of 'information.'… From the very beginning your love and enthusiasm made an impression upon me. You represented an interesting diversion with your Spanish gallantry, waiting for me outside the hotel in order to besiege me with your promises and vows. I was greatly bored during the enforced waiting at Naples. You also found yourself obliged to wait, and sought in me an agreeable recreation…. One day I came to understand that you truly were interesting me greatly, as no other man had ever interested me…. I suspected that I was going to fall in love with you."
