His Only Son: With Dona Berta

by Leopoldo Alas

  5

  ONE AUGUST evening, when the sun, no longer at its hottest, was shining obliquely down on the linen spread out to dry on the lawn and setting a diamond-bright, steel-bright tip of light on every blade of the newly scythed grass, Doña Berta gazed out from the house at the whites and greens of her domain, her soul filled for no reason with a joyful breeze, and she began singing softly, one of those romantic ballads she had learned in her innocent youth, and which she liked to recall when she was not too sad and when Sabelona was nowhere near. In her maid’s presence, she felt embarrassed by such old-fashioned sentimentality. However, when she was completely alone, she, in her deafness, would sing—always slightly off-key and in a slightly melancholy tone—even though she could only hear her own voice inside her head, a kind of song that might be described as the plain chant of musical romanticism. The words she murmured were as sentimental as the music and spoke either of great, unrequited passions or the idyllic repose of a chaste, pastoral love.

  Doña Berta would peer through the branches of the pear and apple trees to see if Sabelona was around and, having assured herself that she was not, would launch upon the air the pearls of her repertoire. Watering can in hand, she would refresh the pepper plants and pick the snails off trees and shrubs (she always liked to do several tasks at once), and sing in a tremulous voice:

  Come, shepherdess, come,

  Leave the hills, leave the fields,

  Leave your happy flock

  And come with me to the sea. . . .

  She reached the far end of the garden and, opposite the gate that opened out onto the hills and the forest of oaks, pines, and chestnuts, she suddenly stood up straight and paused to think. It occurred to her that she could go through the gate and walk up the hill through the nettles and brambles. It had been years since she had thought of doing such a thing, but, at that moment, she felt a little winter sunshine in her soul, felt her body crying out for adventures, for bold escapades. How often, standing by that gate, hidden among the dark foliage, had her young self dreamed that through that gate would walk happiness, the unexpected, the poetic, the ideal, the unprecedented! There, too, she had waited for her flesh-and-blood dream to return, for her captain who never came back. She turned the key, lifted the latch, and set off up the hill. After only a few steps, she had to stop and sit down on the holy ground, carefully pushing aside the thorny stems; the slope was too steep, her way blocked by the tall nettles and brambles. Sitting in the shade, she continued to sing:

  And together in my little boat. . . .

  A rustling in the undergrowth—which she only noticed when it was very close—made her fall silent, like a bird surprised on its lonely perch; she got to her feet, looked up, and saw before her a handsome young man, about thirty or thirty-five, dark and strong and with a thick beard, dressed, albeit somewhat casually, in clothes—jacket, soft felt hat, and wide trousers—that must once have been elegant and of the finest quality; in short, he seemed to her, despite his rather scruffy appearance, like a young man from the city. He was carrying a box attached to a strap, which he wore slung over one shoulder. The two stood looking at each other in silence. Doña Berta realized, at last, that the stranger was speaking to her and, even though she could not hear him, she responded with a nod.

  For some reason, she did not feel afraid, although she was some-what taken aback, even slightly put out. How had this very gentlemanly young gentleman from who knows where ended up on her estate? The path led nowhere, only to this far-flung corner of the earth. She was a little offended that this stranger should simply come strolling across her domain. At last, they spoke. She came straight to the point and told him, first, that she was very hard of hearing, and second, that she was mistress of all he could survey. And who was he? What was he doing here? Despite this rather brusque welcome, both took an instant liking to each other; she could tell, too, that he found her interesting, and they were soon chatting away like old friends, their mutual amiability triumphing over any initial prickly feelings of hostility. And when, moments later, they went through the gate into the garden, Doña Berta already knew all about him. He was a famous painter and had left his latest masterpiece in Madrid—where it could be admired by half of Spain, and where the critics would be singing the praises of his palette—and, having fled all the flattery and flummery to be alone with his muse, solitude, he was now exploring the wilds of Asturias, his summer love, in search of different light effects, the many shades of green below and gray above. He was discovering, inch by inch, all the secret natural beauties of that rugged coast and, finally, being bolder or more fortunate than either the Romans or the Moors, he had arrived, after fighting his way through the dense scrub, at Zaornín and Susacasa itself, which was like reaching the very heart of the mystery.

  “So you like all this, do you?” Doña Berta asked the painter, smiling at him as they sat on a sofa in the living room, which echoed with their words and footsteps.

  “Oh, yes, señora, very, very much,” replied the painter emphatically, using both voice and expression to make his feelings clear.

  And he added under his breath, “And I like you too, distinguished old lady, you fine ornate bureau in human form.”

  The illustrious artist was genuinely charmed. His meeting with Doña Berta had made him understand the importance to a landscape of the souls who inhabit it. When he first stumbled upon the lush greens of Susacasa, it had made him sing out like the great tenor Julián Gayarre:

  O paradiso . . .

  Tu m’apartieni . . .

  And now it suddenly took on dramatic meaning and spiritual significance with the presence of that thin yet still vigorous figure, whose colors could be summarized as: yellow wax, dark brown, and ash-gray. Waxen skin, gray hair, dark brown eyes and clothes. For without realizing it, Doña Berta had gradually begun choosing housecoats and shawls the color of autumn leaves; and as for her still-somewhat curly hair, it had, as it aged, turned not pure silvery white but a more ancient, more melancholy shade, like the rosy tint of twilight on long summer days, stubbornly refusing to surrender the horizon to the black night. This lady, those colors, and the ogival curve of her face reminded the painter of a carved ivory miniature. He fancied that she had escaped from a landscape painted on some lovely antique fan. He felt sure that she herself must smell of sandal-wood.

  The artist accepted the cup of hot chocolate and the preserves that Doña Berta so gladly offered him. They sat in the cool of the garden, beneath a royal laurel, the son or grandson of that other laurel tree. They had talked a lot. The better to observe her, he had tried to ensure that their conversation left him in the shade and let all the light fall upon her story and her domain; however, Doña Berta’s curiosity and the pleasure it always gives us to speak of our sorrows and hopes to people who are intelligent of heart all conspired to make him forget his painterly observations and think about himself. He told his story too, which came down to a series of dreams and a series of paintings. His character lay in his paintings. Nature, lush and smiling but also mysterious and almost sacred; tender, touching figures, sometimes sad or heroic but always modest, shy, and healthy. He had painted the portrait of a girl he had been in love with standing next to a fountain; his public fell equally in love with that village girl, but when he returned in the spring, intending perhaps to marry her, he found her dying of consumption. This memory was so painful to the painter that once again, for purely selfish reasons, he shifted the conversation away from himself, and by association of ideas and with a certain piquant curiosity, dared to ask the lady, as delicately as he could, if she had ever been in love and, if so, what had become of those loves. And in the presence of such gentleness, of that dark, bearded genius’s candid smile, of that faithful lover’s grief, Doña Berta felt her heart fill up with her own long-dead youth, as if a ghostly presence, her lost love, had suddenly flooded it with mysterious light; and so, with the same playful, adventurous spirit that had made her burst into song shortly before she set out fo
r the woods, she decided to tell him about her love, omitting that one dishonorable episode, although so ineffectually that the painter, who was a man of the world, put two and two together and, by clarifying certain obscurities he had noticed in what she had already told him about the Rondaliego family, arrived at something very close to the hidden truth. And so when she asked him if, in his opinion, the captain had been a traitor or had died in the war, he understood the nature of the betrayal being attributed to the “liberal” captain and was inclined to believe, given her description of him, that Doña Berta’s lover had not returned because he had been prevented from doing so. They both sat in silence, thinking about different things. Doña Berta was thinking, “I can’t believe this is the first time I have ever spoken of these things!” And it was true; her lips had never uttered those words, which contained the whole history of her soul.

  And emerging from his own meditations, the painter suddenly said something along the lines of, “I think I understand your captain’s eternal absence, señora. A noble spirit like his, a gentleman of the caliber you describe, would always return from the war to keep his promise to his beloved, unless glorious death awarded him its favors first. Your captain, as I see it, did not come back because, when he went to receive his absolute discharge from the army, he met with that most absolute of absolutes, duty; that ‘liberal,’ who, thanks to his wounds, was granted the honor of knowing you and being loved by you, my most respected friend, that captain, thanks to other more serious wounds, also lost the prize of your love. I can see it now, señora: He did not come back because he died a hero.”

  Her eyes shining with a kind of mystical madness, Doña Berta made as if to speak, but the painter held up one hand and went on: “This is where our two stories dovetail, and you will see how in speaking to you about the inspiration for my latest painting, which was praised by friends and strangers alike, but which does not really deserve such praise, you will see why I presume, why I believe, that your captain behaved just as my captain did. For I have a captain too. He was a dear friend, that is, we had known each other for some time; but his death, his fine and glorious death, made him the close friend of my painter’s eye, which aspires to place a heart in every face. My latest painting, señora, which even you, preferring to know nothing of the world, may have read about in the newspapers in which grocers wrap chickpeas and sugar, is doubtless the least bad of my works. Do you know why? Because it came to me in an instant, and I saw it in reality first. Years ago now, at the time of the second civil war, I was already known and admired but had not yet achieved so-called celebrity, and because it suited both my pocket and my plans, I accepted the post of correspondent for one of those illustrated magazines that are so popular abroad; they employed me to produce paintings of contemporary life, Spanish customs, and, more especially, the war. Along with my taste for strong emotions and my desire to collect useful information for a big painting that I had long been dreaming of, one representing the heroism of the soldier, this assignment took me to the battlefields in the north, where I was determined to witness real fighting close up, and putting my own life in danger was the only way I could do that. And so I sought out danger, not for danger’s sake but in order to see for myself what a heroic death was like. It is said—indeed, even distinguished writers have said as much—that there is nothing great and nothing poetic about war. That isn’t true, not for a painter. At least not for a painter like me. Anyway, it was during that war that I met my captain; he allowed me to do what the regulations probably did not allow: to be where only a soldier should be. My captain was brave and a gambler; but he gambled so well and so honorably that, in him, gambling seemed a virtue because of the many fine qualities it allowed him to display. One day, I spoke to him of his reckless courage and he frowned. ‘I’m neither reckless,’ he said rather irritably, ‘nor courageous; indeed, my duty is to be almost a coward or at least to safeguard my life, because my life belongs not to me but to a creditor, a comrade, a fellow officer, who more or less saved my life, which I myself was about to destroy because, for the first time ever, I had gambled away money I did not have and which I could not afford to pay to my opponent; when my friend learned of my desperate, near-suicidal state, he immediately came to my aid and paid my debt. And now I owe him money, life, and gratitude. But my friend warned me that, since I could not possibly pay back that sum, he had placed in my hands his honor. “Live,” he said, “in order to repay me by working and saving as best you can, because the money I was able to give you today, and which I gave to save your life, is money that I will one day have to give to someone else, and if I don’t, I will lose my reputation. So live in order to help me recover that small fortune and save my honor.” So two honors, his and mine, depend on my existence, which is why, my friend, I flee or should flee from the bullets. Unfortunately, I have two vices—war and gambling—and since I should neither gamble nor die, I will, when I can do so honorably, ask for my discharge from the army and, meanwhile, be as prudent as I can.’ That, more or less, is what my captain said, and I noticed that during an attack the following day, he made a point of not taking any unnecessary risks; but the weeks passed, more clashes with the enemy ensued, and he went back to being his usual bold, reckless self. But I never again told him that he was either bold or reckless. Until, at last, the day of my painting arrived. . . .”

  The painter paused, took a breath, and pondered in his own fashion, which is to say that he re-created the picture in his imagination, not as it appeared in his masterpiece but as it had been in reality.

  Astonished and grateful to the artist for speaking loudly enough so that she did not miss a single word, Doña Berta listened to the story of this famous painting and learned that one cold, gray day, a decisive battle had led that captain’s soldiers to the very brink of despair and looked set to end either in shameful flight or in great heroism. They were all about to flee when the gambler, the one who owed his life to a creditor, hurled himself toward certain death, as if betting his entire fortune on one card; and death surrounded him with a halo of fire and blood; he dragged many of his own comrades to death and glory with him, but, first, there was a moment, the one that remained seared like a lightning flash on the artist’s memory, filling his imagination; a moment when high up on their stronghold, the gambler-captain shone alone, like an apotheosis, while below and farther off, his soldiers hesitated, terror and uncertainty imprinted on their faces.

  “The expression on the captain’s face, which, miraculously, I was able to preserve exactly and transfer to my memory, was unique and utterly unlike the classic or conventional expression one might expect; there was no hint of bellicose exultation or proud patriotism; it was quite different . . . there was pain and remorse in those eyes, that face, that mouth, and those arms, there was blind passion and an unstoppable energy; you could clearly see that he was leaping into a heroic death as if into the abyss of some fascinating, irresistible temptation. The public and the critics have all fallen in love with my captain; they have each interpreted, in their own way, the imagined ideal of his face and his expression; but all have seen in the painting and in my brushwork what really matters—an intensely moving and mysterious spiritual struggle—and they admire it without actually understanding it, unable to explain their admiration. I know the secret of my success though. I’ll tell you what I saw in that man plunging in among the smoke and blood and general panic, which finally swallowed him up. The other men had to flee in the end, and so his heroism proved futile, but my painting will preserve his memory. What the world will never know is that my captain died breaking his promise to avoid all danger. . . .”