The Torrent (Entre Naranjos)

Here was the Church collecting pay for its services from the faithful, and then over again from the State! Here was the Ministry of the Interior appealing for a reduction in taxes—a program of strict economy—while new bishoprics were being created and ecclesiastical appropriations swelled for the benefit of the upper clergy; and with no advantage at all, meanwhile, to the proletariat of the soutane, to the poor curates who, to make a bare living, had to practice the most impious worldliness and unscrupulously exploit the house of God! And while this was going on public works could wait, towns could go without roads, Districts without railroads, though the wildest savages of Asia and Africa had both! Fields could continue to perish of drought while nearby rivers continued to pour their unutilized waters into the sea!

A thrill of conviction rippled through the Chamber. The silence was absolute. Everybody was holding his breath so as not to lose a syllable from that faint voice, which sounded like a cry from a distant tomb. It was as though Truth in person were passing through those murky precincts; and when the orator ended with an invocation to the future, in which social absurdities and injustice should no longer exist, the silence became deeper still, as if a glacial blast of death were blowing upon those brains that had thought themselves deliberating in the best of all possible worlds.

It was now time for the reply. Rafael arose, pale, pulling at his cuffs, waiting a few minutes for the excitement in the Chamber to subside. The audience had relaxed and was whispering and stirring about, after the sustained attention compelled by the concise style and the barely audible voice of the old man.

If Rafael was depending on the sympathy of an audience to encourage him, things looked promising indeed! The hall began to empty. Why not? Who is interested in a committee's reply to the Opposition? Besides, Brull had a bundle of documents on hand. A long-winded affair! Let's escape! Deputies filed by in line across the semi-circle in front of him; while above, in the galleries, the desertion was general. The caramel-chewers, noting that the display of celebrities was over for the day, rose from their places. Their coaches were ready outside for a ride through the Castellana. That strange woman in the diplomatic gallery had also risen to go. But no: she was giving her hand to her companion, bidding him good-bye. Now she had resumed her seat, continuing the busy movement of her fan that annoyed Rafael so. Thanks for the compliment, my fair one I Though as far as he was concerned, the whole audience might have gone, leaving only the president and the mace-bearers. Then he could speak without any fear at all! The public galleries, especially, unnerved him. Nobody had moved there. Those workingmen were without doubt waiting for the rebuttal of his answer from their venerable spokesman. Rafael felt that the swarthy heads above all those dirty blouses and shirt-fronts without collars or neckties were eyeing him with stony coldness. "Now we'll see what this ninny has got to say!"

Rafael began with a eulogy on the immaculate character, the political importance and the profound learning of that venerable septuagenarian who still had strength to battle consistently and nobly for the lost cause of his youth. An exordium of this nature was the regular procedure. That was how "the Chief" did things. And as he spoke, Rafael's eyes turned anxiously upon the clock. He wanted to be long, very long. If he did not talk for an hour and a half or two hours he would feel disgraced. Two hours was the least to be expected from a man of his promise. He had seen party chiefs and faction leaders go it for a whole afternoon, from four to eight, hoarse and puffing, sweating like diggers in a sewer, with their collars wilted to rags, watching the great hall-clock with the intentness of a man waiting to be hanged. "Still an hour left before closing time!" a speaker's friends would say. And the great orator, like a wearied horse, but a thoroughbred, would find new energy somewhere and start on another lap, round and round, repeating what he had already said a dozen times, summarizing the two ideas he had managed to produce in four hours of sonorous chatter. With duration as the test of quality, no one on the government had yet succeeded in equaling a certain redheaded deputy of the Opposition who was forever heckling the Premier, and could talk, if need be, three days in succession for four hours a day.

Rafael had heard people praise the conciseness and the clarity of new-fangled oratory in the parliaments of Europe. The speeches of party leaders in Paris or in London took up never more than half a column in a newspaper. Even the old man he was answering had adopted, to be original in everything, that selfsame conciseness: every sentence of his contained two or three ideas. But the member from Alcira would not be led astray by such niggardly parsimony. He believed that ponderousness and extension were qualities indispensable to eloquence. He must fill a whole issue of the Congressional Record, to impress his friends back home in the District. So he talked and talked on, trying deliberately to avoid ideas. Those he had he would keep in reserve as long as possible, certain that the longer he held them prisoner the longer and more solemn would his oration be.

He had gained a quarter of an hour without making any reply to the previous speech whatever, and literally burying his illustrious antagonist in flowers. Su señoria was noteworthy firstly, because, secondly, because, fourteenthly, because … Nay more, he had accomplished this, performed that, endeavored the other thing—"But"—and with this but, alas, Rafael must begin to loosen up on a little of what he had prepared in advance. Su señoria was an "ideologue" of immense talent, but ever removed from reality; he would govern peoples in accordance with theories dug out of books, without paying any attention to practical considerations, to the individual and indestructible character possessed by every nation!…

And it was worth sitting an afternoon even in that Chamber to hear the slighting tone of scorn with which the member from Alcira emphasized that word ideologue and that phrase about "theories dug out of books" and "living removed from reality!"

"Good, fine. That's the way to give it to him," his comrades encouraged, nodding their sleek bald-pates in indignation against anybody who tried to live apart from reality. Those ideologues needed somebody to tell them what was what!

And the minister, Rafael's friend, the only auditor left on the Blue Bench, pressing his huge paunch against the desk, turned his head—an owlish, hairy head with a sharp beak—to smile indulgently on the young man.

The orator continued, his confidence increasing as he went on, fortified by these signs of approval. He spoke of the patient, deliberate study the committee had made of this matter of the ecclesiastical bud-gets. He was the most modest, the least among them, but there were his comrades—they were there, in truth, solemn gentlemen in English frock-coats, with their hair parted in the middle, from their foreheads to the napes of their necks—studious young men—who had flattered him with the honor of speaking for them—and if they had not been more economical, it was because greater economy had been impossible.

And the heads of the committee-men nodded as they murmured gratefully:

"Say, this fellow Brull can make quite a speech!"

The government was ready to exercise any economy that should prove prudent and feasible, without prejudice to the dignity of the nation; but Spain was an eminently religious country, favored by God in all her crises; and no government loyal to the national genius could ever touch a céntimo of the ecclesiastical appropriation. Never! Never!…

On the word never his voice resounded with the melancholy echo that rings in empty houses. Rafael looked in anguish at the clock. Half an hour. Half an hour gained, and still he had not really damaged his outline. His talk was going so well that he was sorry the Chamber was far from crowded!… Before him, in the shadows of the diplomatic gallery, that fan kept fluttering. Pesky woman! Why couldn't she keep quiet and not spoil his speech!

The president, so restless and vigilant, so ever-ready with watch and bell in hand when any of the Opposition had the floor, was now sitting back in his chair with his eyes shut, dozing away with the confidence of a stage director who is sure the show will go off without a hitch. The panes of the glass dome were glowing under the rays of the sun, but they allowed only a diffuse, green light, a discreet, soft, crypt-like clarity to seep through into the Chamber that lay below in monastic calm. Through the windows over the president's chair, Rafael glimpsed patches of the blue sky, drenched in the gentle light of an afternoon of Springtime. A white dove was hovering in the perspective of those blue squares.

Rafael felt a slackening of his powers of endurance, as if an irresistible languor were stealing over him. The sweet smile of Nature peering at him through the transoms of that gloomy, parliamentary tomb had taken him back to his orange-orchards, and to his Valencian meadows covered with flowers. He felt a curious impulse to finish his speech in a few hasty words, grab his hat and flee, losing himself out among the groves of the Royal Gardens. With that sun and those flowers outside, what was he doing in that hole, talking of things that did not concern him in the least?… But he successfully passed this fleeting crisis. He ceased rummaging among the bundles of documents piled up on the bench, stopped thumbing papers so as to hide his perturbation, and waving the first sheet that came to his hand, he went on.

The intention of the gentleman in opposing this appropriation was not hidden from him. On this matter he had his own, his private and personal ideas. "I understand that su señoria, in here proposing retrenchment, is really seeking to combat religious institutions, of which he is a declared enemy."

And as he reached this point, Rafael dashed wildly into the fray. He was treading firm and familiar ground. All this part of the speech he had prepared, paragraph by paragraph: a defense of Catholicism, an apology pro fide, so intimately bound up with the history of Spain. He could now use impassioned outbursts and tremors of lyric enthusiasm, as if he were preaching a new crusade.

On the Opposition benches he caught the ironic glitter of a pair of spectacles, the convulsions of a white chin quivering over two folded arms, as if a kindly, indulgent smile had greeted his parade of so many musty and faded commonplaces. But Rafael was not to be intimidated. He had gotten away with an hour almost! Forward, to "Section Two" of the outline, the part about the great national and Christian epic! And he began to reel off visions of the cave of Covadonga; the fantastic tree of the Reconquest "where the warrior hung up his sword, the poet his harp," and so on and so on, for everybody hung up something there; seven centuries of wars for the cross, a rather long time, believe me, gentlemen, during which Saracen impiety was expelled from Spanish soil! Then came the great triumphs of Catholic unity. Spain mistress of almost the whole world, the sun never allowed to set on Spanish domains; the caravels of Columbus bearing the cross to virgin lands; the light of Christianity blazing forth from the folds of the national banner to shed its illuminating rays throughout the earth.

And as if this hymn to enlightening Christianity, chanted by an orator who could now hardly see across the gloomy hall, had been a signal, the electric lights went on; and the statues, the escutcheons, and the harsh, blatant figures painted on the cupola, sprang forth from obscurity.

Rafael could hardly contain his joy at the facility with which his speech was developing. That wave of light which was shed over the hall, in the middle of the afternoon, while the sun was still shining, seemed to him like the sudden entrance of Glory, approaching to give him the accolade of renown.

Caught up now in the real torrent of his premeditated verbosity, he continued to relieve himself of all that he had learned by cramming during the past few days. "In vain does su señoria fatigue his wits. Spain is and will remain a profoundly religious country. Her history is the history of Catholicism: she has survived in all her times of storm and stress by tightly embracing the Cross." And he could now come to the national wars; from the battles in which popular piety saw Saint James, on his white steed, lopping off the heads of the Moors with his golden cutlass, to the uprising of the people against Napoleon, behind the banner of the parish and with their scapularies on their bosoms. He did not have a word to say about the present. He left the pitiless criticism of the old revolutionist intact. Why not? The dream of an ideologue! He was absorbed in his song of the past, affirming for the hundredth time that Spain had been great because she had been Catholic and that when for a moment she had ceased to be Catholic, all the evils of the world had descended upon her. He spoke of the excesses of the Revolution, of the turbulent Republic of '73, (a cruel nightmare to all right-thinking persons) and of the "canton" of Cartagena (the supreme recourse of ministerial oratory),—a veritable cannibal feast, a horror that had never been known even in this land of pronunciamientos and civil wars. He tried his best to make his hearers feel the terror of those revolutions, whose chief defect had been that they had revolutionized nothing.... And then came a panegyric on the Christian family, on the Catholic home, a nest of virtues and blessings, whereas in nations where Catholicism did not reign all homes were repulsive brothels or horrible bandit caves.

"Fine, Brull, very good," grunted the minister, his elbows stretched forward over his desk, delighted to hear his own ideas echoing from the young man's mouth.

The orator rested for a moment, with his glance sweeping the galleries now bright with the electric lighting. The woman in the diplomatic section had stopped fanning herself. She was following him closely. Her eyes met his.

Of a sudden Rafael nearly fell to his seat. Those eyes!… Perhaps an astonishing resemblance! But no; it was she—she was smiling to him with that same jesting, mocking smile of their earlier acquaintance!

He felt like the bird writhing on the tree unable to free itself from the hypnotic stare of the serpent coiled near the trunk. Those sarcastic, mischievous eyes had upset all his train of thought. He tried to finish in some way or other, to end his speech as soon as possible. Every minute was an added torment to him; he imagined he could hear the mute gibes that mouth must be uttering at his expense.

Again he looked at the clock; in fifteen minutes more he would be through. And he spurted on at a mad pace, with a hurried voice, forgetting the devices he had thought of to prolong the peroration, dumping them out all in a heap—anything to get through! "The Concordate… sacred obligations toward the clergy … their services of old … promises of close friendship with the Pope … the generous father of Spain … in short, we cannot reduce the budget by a céntimo and the committee stands, by its proposals without accepting a single amendment."

As he sat down, perspiring, excited, wiping his congested face energetically, his bench companions gathered around him congratulating him, shaking his hands. He was every inch an orator! He should have gone deeper into the matter and taken even more time! He shouldn't have been so modest!

And from the bench below came the grunt of the minister:

"Very good, very good. You said exactly what I would have said."

The old revolutionist arose to make a short rebuttal, repeating the contentions of his original speech, of which no denial had been attempted.

"I'm quite tired," sighed Rafael, in reply to the felicitations.

"You can go out if you wish," said the minister. "I think I'll answer the rebuttal myself. It's a courtesy due to so old a deputy."

Rafael raised his eyes toward the diplomatic gallery. It was empty. But he imagined he could still make out the plumes of a woman's hat in the dark background.

He left his bench hastily and hurried to the corridor, where a number of deputies were waiting with their congratulations.

Not one of them had heard him, but they were all profuse in their flattering remarks. They shook his hand and detained him maddeningly. Once more he thought he could descry at the end of the corridor, at the foot of the gallery staircase, standing out against the glass exit-door, those black, waving plumes.

He elbowed his way through the crowds, deaf to all congratulations, brushing aside the hands that were proferred to him.

Near the door he stumbled into two of his associates, who were looking out with eyes radiant with admiration.

"What a woman? Eh?"

"She looks like a foreigner. Some diplomat's wife, I guess!"

III

As he came out of the building he saw her on the sidewalk, about to step into a vehicle. An usher of the Congress was holding the carriage door open, with the demonstrative respect inspired by the goldbraid shining on the driver's hat. It was an embassy coach!

Rafael approached, believing, from the carriage, that it still might prove to be a case of an astonishing resemblance. But no; it was she; the same woman she had always been, as if eight hours and not eight years had passed:

"Leonora! You here!…"

She smiled, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to see him again.

"I saw you and heard you. You did very well, Rafael: I enjoyed it."

And grasping his hand in a frank, hearty clasp of friendship, she entered the carriage with a rustle of silk and fine linen.

"Come! Won't you step in too?" she asked, smiling. "Join me for a little drive along the Castellana. It's a magnificent afternoon; a little fresh air won't do any harm after that muggy room."

Rafael, to the astonishment of the usher, who was surprised to see him in such seductive company, got in; and the carriage rolled off. There they were, together again, sitting side by side, swaying gently back and forth with the motion of the soft springs.

Rafael was at a loss for words. The cold, ironic smile of his former lover chilled him. He was flushed with shame at the thought of how he had treated that beautiful creature the last time they had seen each other. He wanted to say something, and yet he could not find a way to begin. The ceremonious, formal usted she had employed in inviting him into the carriage embarrassed him. At last he ventured, timidly, also avoiding the intimate tu!

"Imagine our meeting here! What a surprise!"

"I got in yesterday; tomorrow I leave for Lisbon. A short stop, isn't it! Just time for a word with the director of the Real; perhaps I'll come next winter to sing Die Walküre here. But let's talk about you, illustrious orator.... But I may say tu to you, mayn't I?" she corrected—"for I believe we are still friends."

"Yes, friends, Leonora.... I have never been able to forget you."

But the feeling he put into the words vanished before the cold smile with which she answered.

"Friends; that's it," she said, slowly. "Friends, and nothing more. Between us there lies a corpse that prevents us from getting very close to each other again."

"A corpse?" asked Rafael, not catching her meaning.

"Yes; the love you murdered.... Friends, nothing more; comrades united by complicity in a crime."

And she laughed with cruel sarcasm, while the carriage turned into one of the avenues of Recoletos. Leonora looked vacantly out upon the central boulevard. The rows of iron benches were filled with people. Groups of children in charge of governesses were playing gaily about in the soft, golden splendor of the afternoon.

"I read in the papers this morning that don Rafael Brull, 'of the Finance Commission,' if you please, would undertake to speak for the Ministry on the matter of the budget; so I got down on my knees to an old friend of mine, the secretary of the English embassy, and begged him to come and take me to the session. This coach is his.... Poor fellow! He doesn't know you, but the moment he saw you stand up to speak, he took to his heels.... He missed something though; for really, you weren't half bad. I'm quite impressed. Say, Rafael, where do you dig up all those things?"

But Rafael looked uneasily at her cruel smile and refused to accept her praise. Besides, what did he care about his speech? It seemed to him that he had been for years and years in that coach; that a whole lifetime had gone by since he left the halls of the Congress. His gaze was fixed on her in admiration, and his astonished eyes were drinking in the beauty of her face, and of her figure.

"How beautiful you are!" he murmured in impulsive enchantment. "The same as you were then. It seems impossible that eight years can have flown by."

"Yes; I admit that I bear up well. Time seems not to touch me. A little longer at the dressing table—that's all. I'm one of the people who die in harness, so to speak, making no concessions, so far as looks go, to old age. Rather than surrender, I'd kill myself. I intend to put Ninon de Lenclos in the shade!"

It was true. Eight years had made not the slightest impression on her. The same freshness, the same robust, energetic slenderness, the identical flames of arrogant vitality in her green eyes. Instead of withering under the incessant parching of passion's flame, she seemed to grow stronger, hardier, in the crucible.

She measured the deputy with sarcastic playfulness.

"Poor Rafael! I'm sorry I can't say as much for you. How you've changed! You look almost like a Knight of the Crown. You're fat! You're bald! And those eyeglasses! Why, I could hardly recognize you in the Chamber. How my romantic Moor has aged! You poor dear! You even have wrinkles!…"

And she laughed, as if it filled her with intense joy, the joy of vengeance, to see her former lover so crestfallen at her portrayal of his decrepitude.

"You're not happy, are you! I can see that. And yet, you ought to be. You must have married that girl your mother picked for you. You doubtless have children.... Don't try to fib to me, just to seem more… what shall I say … more interesting! I can see it from the looks of you. You are the pater familias all over. I am never mistaken in such things!… Well, why aren't you happy? You have all the requisites for a personage of note, and you will shortly be one. I'll bet you wear that sash to hold your paunch in! You are rich, you make speeches in that horrid, gloomy, cave. Your friends back home will go into ecstasies when they read the oration their honorable deputy has delivered; and I imagine they're already preparing fireworks and music for a reception to you. What more could you ask for?"

And with her eyes half-closed, smiling maliciously, she waited for his reply, knowing in advance what it would be.

"What more can I ask for? Love; Leonora, the love I once had … with you."

And with the vehemence of other days, as if they were still among the orange-trees of the old Blue House, the deputy gave way to his eight years of longing.

He told her of the image he nourished in his sadness. Love! The Love that passes but once in a lifetime, crowned with flowers, and followed by a retinue of kisses and laughter. And whosoever follows him in obedience, finds happiness at the end of the joyous pathway; but whosoever, through pride or selfishness, lags by the wayside, comes to lament his folly and to expiate his cowardice in an everlasting life of tedium and sorrow! He had sinned, grievously. That he would confess! But could she not forgive him? He had paid for his deliquency with eight long, monotonous, crushing, meaningless years, one suffocating stifling night that never broke into morning. But they had met again! There was still time, Leonora! They could still call back the Springtime of their lives, make it burgeon anew, compel Love to retrace his footsteps, pass their way again, stretching forth his sweet hands of youth to them!

The actress was listening with a smile upon her lips, her eyes closed, her head thrown back in the carriage. It was an expression of intense pleasure, as if she were tasting with delight the fire of love that was still burning in Rafael, and that, to her, meant vengeance.