“Who told you all those lies?” said the good woman, bursting into hearty laughter.
“You not deny it, you make me angry. You laughing at me.” As he said these words, he was seized with a sudden fury, stood up, and, before Benina could realise the danger she was in, struck her with his stick with all his might. Fortunately the poor woman was able to save her head by dodging the blow, but could not save her shoulder. She determined to get the stick away from him, but before she could do so another blow fell on her shoulder, and then one on her hip: the best defence was retreat. In a trice she had put ten yards between them; he tried to follow her, she dodged him and found a safe spot after which his furious blows spent themselves on the air or the ground. One of these brought him down flat on his face, and there he stayed, biting the dust, while the lady of his heart called out to him: “Almudena, you poor old boy, wait till I catch you, you silly fellow, you old ass.”
24
After writhing on the ground, thrashing his arms and legs about as in an epileptic fit, beating his head, tearing his hair and uttering guttural cries in Arabic which Benina could not understand, he burst into tears like a child, and, sitting cross-legged like a Moor, continued to beat his brow with his fists and to scratch his face with convulsive fingers. He wept with bitterness and despair, and this seemed to assuage the fury of his madness. Benina came a little closer and saw how his face was running with tears which wetted his beard. His eyes were two fountains from which flowed the torrent of his infinite sorrow.
There was a long pause. Then Almudena, in the plaintive voice of a punished child, called affectionately to his friend: “Nina, my dear, are you there?”
“Yes, dear boy, I’m here, watching you weeping like St Peter when he had been mean enough to deny Christ.”
“Yes, yes, my dear… and I beat you! Does it hurt much?”
“Indeed, it does, it stings like anything.”
“I bad man. I weeping many days. My dear, you forgive me?”
“Yes, forgiven. But I don’t trust you.”
“You take stick,” he said, holding it out. “Come here, beside me. Take stick and beat me hard, till you kill me.”
“No, I don’t trust you.”
“Then take this knife,” he went on, taking it from the inside pocket of his coat. “I bought it to strike you, you kill me with it, take my life. Mordejai not want life, death yes, death.”
In a trice Benina had taken possession of both weapons, stick and knife, and now fearlessly drew close to the unhappy blind man and put her hand on his shoulder. “You’ve broken one of my bones, for it hurts me very much,” she said. “I wonder, wherever can I go to get cured? No, there’s no bone broken, but you’ve given me some bruises like black puddings as big as my head, and you’ll have to pay for all the arnica I’ll be using on them this afternoon.”
“I give you … life … forgive me! I weep many months, if you not forgive me. I mad … I love you. If you not love me, Almudena kill himself.”
“Well, well. But you’re under some sort of a spell, you know. Fancy saying that you’re in love with me, what a story! Don’t you realise that I’m an old woman and that if you could see me you would fall over backwards with the fright you’d get?”
“You not old. I loving you.”
“You love Pedra.”
“No, drunkard, ugly, bad. You the only woman, I have no other.” In his continuing affliction, his words interrupted with deep sighs and endless sobbing, utterly incoherent, Almudena declared his feelings: and if Benina could bear to listen to such uncouth language it was not because of the ideas expressed but for the deep sincerity which the peculiar modulations of his voice, the howls, the desperate cries and the strangled mutterings showed. He told her that ever since King Samdai showed him the “only” woman, whom he was to follow and make his own, he had been wandering over the face of the earth. The more he travelled, the further ahead she went, and he could never catch up with her. As time passed, he came to believe that Nicolasa was the one who had been eluding him, and with her he led a wandering life for three years. But he soon realised that she was not the one. She, the right one, had still been there ahead of him, veiled and never showing her face. Naturally, he saw her only with his mind’s eyes.
Well then, when he met Benina one morning, when she was brought to St Sebastián’s for the first time by Eliseo, his heart had jumped as if trying to escape from his breast, telling him: “This is the one, the only one, there is no other.”
The more he talked to her, the more he became convinced that she was “his” woman; but he wanted to let time go by, so that he could “prove” it. Finally, all doubts fled, and there he was waiting, waiting, for an opportunity to tell her… And so it was that when he was told that Benina loved the “pretty gentleman” and that she had taken him home in a carriage, he fell into despair, followed by a fury so great that he didn’t know whether to kill himself or her. He decided to kill both at once, after despatching half the population of this world to the other one, by randomly striking left and right.
Benina listened to this story – given here in its shortest possible version to avoid tedium – with interest and respect; and as she was a sensible woman, she neither allowed herself to be flattered by this example of African passion, nor did she make fun of it, as she might well have done, considering her own age and the poor blind man’s physical condition. Keeping to a discreet middle course, she concentrated on the immediate objective of calming her friend by keeping his mind off thoughts of death and slaughter. She explained the matter of the “pretty gentleman”, trying to convince Almudena that it was only for charitable motives that she had taken him to her mistress’s house, that there was no question of love or any improper relationship. Mordejai was unconvinced, and finally put the matter in a way that showed his sincerity and the depth of his emotion, by saying that for him to believe what Benina had just said, she would have to prove it by deeds, rather than words, for words were soon gone with the wind. How could she prove it with deeds that would convince him completely? Well, simply: by leaving everything, her mistress, her home, her pretty gentleman, and going to live with Almudena, and the two of them staying united for the rest of their lives.
The old lady avoided refusing outright, so as not to upset him any more, but merely pointed out the difficulty of a sudden break with her mistress, who would die if she were to abandon her. But the Moroccan’s replies to all these arguments were of the sort sanctioned by the privileges and laws of lovers, which override all others:
“If you love me, dear friend, I marry you.”
As he made the offer of his pale hand, accompanied by a tender sigh and a modest whimper, which caused his enormous lips to stretch to his ears and then contract into a monstrous pout, Benina could not help giving a little mocking giggle. But suppressing it quickly, she replied very reasonably:
“My son – and this I call you because you are young enough to be my son – I thank you for the compliment, but remember that I am over sixty.”
“Sixty or not, if you were a thousand I still love you.”
“I’m an old woman and no use to anybody.”
“Yes, you are, dear friend, I love you, more than the blessed light; you are young.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“I marry you, we go together to my country, land of Sus. My father Saul, he rich. My cousins, they rich. My mother Rimna, she rich and beautiful. They love you, make you their daughter. You see my country, many olive trees, many orange trees, many sheep belonging to my father, many trees down by the river; big house, with waterwheel of fresh water … beautiful, not cold, not hot.”
Although this blissful picture had its effect on Benina, she did not allow it to influence her. Practical as she was, she could see the drawbacks of a sudden removal to such distant lands, where she would find herself among strangers who spoke double-dutch and would certainly have different customs, a different religion and even different clothes, for they surely mu
st go about dressed in loincloths… what a sight she would look in a loincloth! Dear Mordejai. What funny ideas he had. She pointed out affectionately and gratefully, the disadvantages of acting in a hurry in such serious matters, like getting married straightaway and dashing off all the way to Africa, which is, as they say, “where the Pyrenees begin”. No, no it must all be carefully thought out, taking time so as not to make a mistake. It would be more sensible, she said, to leave all this matter of marriage and honeymoon until later, to concentrate for the moment on getting everything together so as to succeed in casting the spell to summon King Samdai. If success were achieved, as Almudena had assured her would be the case, and she became the owner of hampers of jewels which could so easily be converted into bank notes, then all their problems would be solved and everything would be easy. Money is the infallible clue to the solution of every problem. In short, she was ready to follow him to the ends of the earth, as soon as King Samdai – after they had observed all the proper rules, ceremonies and holy prayers – had produced what they asked of him.
When the African heard this, he started to think and then struck himself a mighty blow on the forehead, like a man who suffers great confusion and desperation. “Forgive me, something I forgot to tell you,” he said.
“What, are you going to make excuses now? Is it all no good because one of the essential ingredients is missing?”
“I forgot essential, it’s all no good, because you are a woman.”
“Damnation!” exclaimed Benina, unable to contain her annoyance. “Why didn’t you start with that? If the first essential is to be a man … well, really!
“Forgive me, I just forgot.”
“You’re soft in the head! What bungling! But, oh dear, the fault is mine for believing the lies they invent in your cursed country and in that religion of horned devils. No, I didn’t really believe it then, it was poverty that blinded me and I don’t believe in it now. May God pardon me the evil thought of calling up the devil with all that flummery and may the Holy Virgin pardon me too.”
“If this no good because you woman,” said Almudena embarrassed, “I know something else, if you do it, you take all the money you want.”
“No, you won’t fool me again. You’re a clever one; I don’t believe a word you say.”
“By the blessed light, it’s true. Lightning strike me if I deceive you. Take money, much money.”
“When?”
“When you like.”
“Well then, though I shan’t believe you, tell me quickly.”
“I give you little piece of paper.”
“A piece of paper?”
“You put on tip of tongue.”
“On the tip of my tongue?”
“Yes. Go into bank with it, paper on tongue, no one sees you. You can take all money, no one sees you.”
“But that’s stealing, Almudena.”
“No one sees you, no one says anything.”
“Away with you! I don’t behave like that, I don’t steal. You say they won’t see me? But God will.”
25
The impassioned Moroccan continued to court his ladylove (we must call her this, for this is the mental picture he now had of her); and realising that a positive approach was the best and that she would respond to an appeal to her greed, her desire for riches, rather than to reason, he produced another magic spell, born of his Semitic blood and his rich imagination. He told her that, among all the secrets with which God had endowed him, there was one that he intended to divulge only to the person to whom he was entirely devoted; and as she was that person, the dream woman, the one promised him by King Samdai, to her alone would he reveal the infallible method of discovering buried treasure. Although Benina pretended to disbelieve all such stories, the fact is that she did not miss a single syllable of Almudena’s account. It was all quite simple, as he described it, although the practical difficulties of achieving the magic effect were obvious. The person who wanted to know, for sure, for very sure, where money had been hidden, had only to dig a hole in the earth, and get into it and stay there forty days, dressed in his underclothes, feeding only on barley flour without salt, and spending his time exclusively reading a holy book, with long pages, and meditating, meditating on the profound truths contained in the book.
“And I’m supposed to do this?” said Benina impatiently. “Not likely! And the book is written in your language. Idiot, how can I read those scribbles, when I’m not much of a scholar even in Castilian?”
“I read it – then you can read it.”
“But will there be room for both of us in this hole in the ground, this mole hole?”
“Of course.”
“Well, then. And to be able to see the text clearly, I suppose you’ll be wearing blind man’s spectacles?”
“I know it by heart,” said the African, undismayed.
The “operation”, as soon as the forty days penance were over, would be completed by writing on a small piece of paper, such as a cigarette paper, certain magic words that only he knew; then the paper would be tossed in the air, and as the wind carried it here and there, the two of them would recite prayers, many prayers, without losing sight of the airborne piece of paper. Wherever it came to earth, there they would find, by digging and digging, the buried treasure, probably a large cooking pot full of gold coins.
Benina showed her disbelief by bursting out laughing, but this new nostrum for finding treasure left its mark, because she spoke seriously when she said:
“I don’t think there’s money buried out in the country. Possibly where you were brought up it may have happened from time to time, but not here. No, you would find it in courtyards and back gardens, under the floor in woodsheds, warehouses and wine cellars or even built into the walls of rooms.”
“Even that I could discover. I tell you how, if you love me, if you marry me.”
“We’ll talk about that later,” said Benina, taking off her scarf and putting it on again, a sure sign of impatience and of a desire to leave.
“You not go away, dear friend, no,” muttered the blind man, plaintively. “You stay with me always.”
“It’s not possible for the time being. Be patient, my son.”
He was seized with fury once more when he realised that she was getting up to go, and leapt on her, clutching her arms and roaring rather than speaking as he desperately urged her to stay with him. “I loving you,” he was saying, “I kill myself, drown myself in the river, if you not come with me.”
“Let me be, for heaven’s sake, Almudena,” said his ladylove in a distressed voice. “I do love you, but my duties call me.”
“I’ll kill that pretty gentleman,” he said clenching his fists and advancing towards Benina, who had retreated in some concern.
“Be reasonable: if not, I shan’t love you. Let’s go. If you promise to be good and not beat me, we can go together.”
“I not beat you, no no. I loving you more than the blessed light.”
“Then if you’re not going to beat me, come on then,” she said, going to him affectionately and taking his arm.
He calmed down and they started the ascent once more. As they went he explained to his ladylove that he had left Santa Casilda to be rid of La Pedra; and as times were bad and pennies scarce, he intended to move that very afternoon to Las Cambroneras, hard by the Puente de Toledo, because in that quarter there were rooms to rent for only ten centimos a night. Benina did not approve of the change, because she had heard that the poor lived in great squalor there, crowded and indecently mixed up together in tiny rooms, but he insisted, pathetic and depressed, declaring that he wanted to be uncomfortable, as a penance, and spend his days weeping and weeping, until Adonai softened the heart of his loved one. They both sighed, and walked together in silence the whole length of the Calle de Toledo. When Benina offered him a duro for his removal expenses, he expressed a sublime indifference: “I not want money. Money filthy, disgusting. I loving dear friend, my wife together with me.”
/> “Sure, sure, but be patient,” said Benina, afraid that he was going to get upset all over again. “I promise that we’ll discuss all that tomorrow.”
“Will you come to Las Cambroneras?”
“Yes, I promise.”
“I not go back to the church. Don’t like those bossy people, Casiana, Eliseo. I hate such people. I’ll beg on the Puente de Toledo.”
“Expect me tomorrow and promise to behave.”
“I weeping, weeping.”
“But what are you crying about? Dear Almudena, after all, I do love you. Don’t be difficult.”
“You go home now, you see pretty gentleman, you give him caresses.”
“What, me? You’ve a nerve! Why, yes of course, just what I’ve been wanting to do! But how can you believe such nonsense? As if I cared anything for that old scarecrow! He’s as old as the hills, a relative of my mistress’ and he was picked up and taken to her home on her orders.”
“He’s a monster.”
“Such a monster. There’s no comparison between him and you. Well, my lad, I’m in a great hurry. Goodbye till tomorrow.” Taking advantage of a moment when Almudena was standing stupefied, she ran off, leaving him leaning against a wall, near the shop called El Botijo. It was the only way for her to get away, so tightly did he cling to her. After a little while, he let himself slide to the ground, and there the passers-by could see him the whole afternoon, sitting silently, his black hand extended.
Benina found that nothing much had changed at home, apart from the fact that Doña Paca was in a happy mood, continually praising her guest’s refinement and the delightful way in which the conversation had brought back memories of Algeciras and Ronda. The good lady felt that she had returned to the years of her youth and had almost forgotten her poverty. Moved by the generosity which in those early days had been a major part of her improvident nature and the cause of her misfortunes, she suggested to Nina that they should get two bottles of sherry, galantine of turkey, eggs spun with sugar and boar’s head for Frasquito.
Misericordia (Dedalus European Classics) Page 16