Chapter 2

"No, no, thanks," answered Zureda. "I don't want to be bargaining with you. We can all help each other. You and I are like brothers, anyhow."

That night after supper, Rafaela dragged all the useless furniture out of the dining-room alcove and swept and scoured it clean. Next day she got up early to go to a hard-by pawnshop, where she bought her an iron bed with a spring and a woolen mattress. This bed she carefully set up, and fixed it all fine and soft. A couple of chairs, a washstand and a little table covered with a green baize spread completed the furnishing of the room.

After everything was ready, the young woman dressed and combed herself to receive the guest, who arrived about the middle of the afternoon with his luggage, to wit: a box with his workman's tools, a trunk and a little cask. This cask held a certain musty light wine, which--so Berlanga said, after coffee and one of Zureda's cigars had made him expansive--had been given him by a "lady friend" of his who ran a tavern.

A few days passed, days of unusual pleasure to the engineer and his wife, for the silversmith was a man of joyful moods and very fond of crooking his elbow, so that his naturally fertile conversation became hyperbolically colored and quite Andalusian in its exuberance. At dessert, the merry quips of Berlanga woke sonorous explosions of hilarity in Amadeo. When he laughed, the engineer would lean his massive shoulders against the back of the chair. Now and again, as if to underscore his bursts of merriment, he would deal the table shrewd blows. After this he would slowly emit his opinions; and if he had to advise Berlanga, he did it in a kind of paternal way, patiently, good-naturedly.

When he was quite well again, Amadeo went back to work. The morning he took leave of his wife, she asked him:

"Which engine have you got, to-day?"

"Nigger," he answered.

"My, what bad luck! I'm afraid something's going to happen to you!"

"Rubbish! Why should it? _I_ can handle her!"

He kissed Rafaela, tenderly pressing her against his big, strong breast. At this moment an unwholesome thought, grotesquely cruel, cut his mind like a whip; a thought that he would pass the night awake, out in the storm, in the engine-cab, while there in Madrid another man would be sleeping under the same roof with his wife. But this unworthy suspicion lasted hardly a second. The engineer realized that Berlanga, though a riotous, dissipated chap, was at heart a brotherly friend, far from base enough to betray him in any such horrible manner.

Rafaela went with her husband to the stairway. There they both began again to inflame each other with ardent kisses and embraces of farewell. The wife's black eyes filled with tears as she told him to keep himself well bundled up and to think often of her. Tears quite blinded her.

"What a good lass she is!" murmured Zureda.

And as he recalled the poisonous doubt of a moment before, the man's ingenuous nobility felt shame.

* * * * *

The life of Manolo Berlanga turned out to be pretty disreputable. He liked wine, women and song, and many a time came home in the wee small hours, completely paralyzed. This invariably happened during the absence of the engineer. Next morning he was always very remorseful, and went with contrition to the kitchen, where Rafaela was getting breakfast.

"Are you mad at me?" he used to ask.

She answered him in a maternal kind of way and told him to be good; this always made him laugh.

"None o' that!" he used to say. "I don't like being good. That's one of the many inflictions marriage forces on a man. Don't you have enough 'being good' in this house, with Amadeo?"

Among men, love is often nothing more than the carnal obsession produced in them by the constant and repeated sight of one and the same woman. Every laugh, every motion of the woman moving about them possesses a charm at first hardly noticed. But after a while, under the spell of a phenomenon we may call cumulative, this charm waxes potent; it grows till some time it unexpectedly breaks forth in an enveloping, conquering passion.

Now one morning it happened that Manolo Berlanga was eating breakfast in the dining-room before going to the shop. Rafaela, her back toward him, was scrubbing the floor of the hallway.

"How you do work, my lady!" cried the silversmith, jokingly.

Her answer was a gay-toned laugh; then she went on with her task, sometimes recoiling so that she almost sat on her heels, again stretching her body forward with an energy that lowered the tight-corseted slimness of her waist and set in motion the fullness of her yielding hips. The silversmith had often seen her thus, without having paid any heed; but hardly had he come to realize her sensual appeal when the flame of desire blazed up in him.

"There's a neat one for you!" thought he.

And he kept on looking at her, his vicious imagination dwelling on the perfections of that carnal flower, soft and vibrant. His brown study continued a while. Then suddenly, with the brusqueness of ill-temper, he got up.

"Well, so long!" said he.

He stopped in the stairway to greet a neighbor and light a cigarette. By the time he had reached the street-door he had forgotten all about Rafaela. But, later, his desire once more awoke. At dinner he dissimulated his observations of the young woman's bare arms. Strong and well-molded they were, those arms, and under the cloth of her sleeves rolled up above the elbow, the flesh swelled exuberantly.

"Hm! You haven't combed your hair, to-day," said Berlanga.

She answered with a laugh--one of those frankly voluptuous laughs that women with fine teeth enjoy.

"You're right," said she. "You certainly notice everything. I didn't have time."

"It don't matter," answered the gallant. "Pretty women always look best that way, with their hair flying and their arms bare."

"You mean that, really?"

"I certainly do!"

"Then you've got the temperament and makings of a married man."

"_I_ have?"

"Sure!"

"How's that?"

She laughed again, gayly, coquettishly, adding:

"Because you already know that married women generally don't pay much attention to their husbands. That's what hurts marriage--women not caring how they look."

So they went on talking away, and all through their rather spicy conversation, full of meaning, a mutual attraction began to make itself felt. Silently this began sapping their will-power. At last the woman glanced at her clock on the sideboard.

"Eight o'clock," said she. "I wonder what Amadeo's doing, now?"

"Well, that's according," answered Berlanga. "When did he get to Bilbao?"

"This morning."

"Then he's probably been asleep part of the time, and now I guess he's playing dominoes in some café. And we, meantime--we're here--you and I----"

"And you don't feel very well, eh?" she asked.

"I?"

Looking at Rafaela with eloquent steadiness he slowly added:

"I feel a damn sight better than _he_ does!"

Then, while he drank his coffee, the silversmith laid out on the table his board-money for that week. He began to count:

"Two and two's four--nine--eleven--thirty-eight pesetas. Rotten week I've had! Say, I've hardly pulled down enough for my drinks."

He got together seven dollars, piled them up--making a little column of silver change--and shoved them over to Rafaela.

"Here you go!" said he.

She blushed, as she answered. You would have thought her offended by the somewhat hostile opposition of debtor and creditor that the money seemed to have set up between them. She asked:

"What's all this you're giving me?"

"Say! What d'you suppose? Don't I pay every week? Well, then, here's my board. Seven days at five pesetas per, that's just thirty-five pesetas, huh? What's the matter with you?"

He made the coins jump and jingle in his agile hand, well-used to dealing cards. Then he added:

"To-day's Saturday. So then, I'll pay you now. That'll leave me three pesetas for extras--tobacco and car-fare. Oh, it's a fine time _I'll_ have!"

With a lordly gesture, good-natured, protecting, the woman handed back Berlanga's money.

"Next week you can pay up," said she. "I'm fixed all right. By luck, even if I'm not five dollars to the good, I'm not five to the bad."

The silversmith offered the money again. But this time the offer was weak, and was made only in the half-hearted way that seemed necessary to keep him in good standing. Then he got up from the table, rubbed his hands up and down his legs to smooth the ugly bulge out of the knees of his trousers, pulled down his vest and readjusted the knot of his cravat before the mirror. He exclaimed with a kind of boastful swagger:

"D'you know what I'm thinking?"

"Tell me!"

"Oh, I don't dare."

"Why not?"

"You might get mad at me."

"No, no!"

"Promise you won't?"

"On my word of honor! Come on, now, say anything you like, and _I_ won't mind."

"Well--how about--_him_?"

"I know what I'm doing!"

"Yes, but--see here! You don't care a hang for me, anyhow. You don't think very much of _me_!

"I do, too! I think a lot!"

She looked at him in a gay, provocative manner, stirred to the depths of her by such a strong, overpowering caprice that it almost seemed love.

Expansively the silversmith answered:

"Well, then, since we've got money and we're all alone, why don't we take in a dance, to-night?"

The whole Junoesque body of the young woman--a true Madrid type--trembled with joy. It had been a long time since she had had any such amusement; not since her marriage had she danced. Zureda, something of a stick-in-the-mud and in no wise given to pleasures, had never wanted to take her to any dances, not even to a masquerade. A swarm of joyful visions filled her memory. Ah, those happy Sundays when she had been single! Saturday nights, at the shop, she and the other girls had made dates for the next day. Sometimes they had visited the dance-halls at Bombilla. Other times they had gone to Cuatro Caminos or Ventas del Espiritu Santo. And once there, what laughter and what joy! What strange emotions of half fear, half curiosity they had felt at sensing the desire of whatever man had asked them to dance!

Rafaela straightened up, quick, pliant, transfigured.

"You aren't any more willing to ask me, than I am to go!" said she.

"Well, why not, then?" demanded the silversmith. "Let's go, right now! Let's take a run out to Bombilla, and not leave as long as we've got a cent!"

The young woman fairly jumped for joy, skipped out of the dining-room, tied a silk handkerchief over her head and most fetchingly threw an embroidered shawl over her shoulders. She came back, immediately. Her little high-heeled, pointed, patent-leather boots and her fresh-starched, rustling petticoats echoed her impatience. She went up to Berlanga, took him familiarly by the arm, and said:

"I tell you, though, I'm going to pay half."

The silversmith shook his head in denial. She added, positively:

"That's the only way I'll go. Aren't we both going to have a good time? That's fair, for us both to pay half."

Berlanga accepted this friendly arrangement. As soon as they got into the street they hired a carriage. At Bombilla they had a first-rate supper and danced their heads off, till long past midnight. They went home afoot, slowly, arm in arm. Rafaela had drunk a bit too much, and often had to stop. Dizzy, she leaned her head on the silversmith's breast. Manolo, himself a bit tipsy and out of control, devoured her with his eyes.

"Say, you're a peach!" he murmured.

"Am I, really?"

"Strike me blind if you're not! Pretty, eh? More than that! You're a wonder--oh, great! The best I ever saw, and I've seen a lot!"

She still had enough wit left to pretend not to hear him, playing she was ill. She stammered:

"Oh, I--I'm so sick!"

Suddenly Berlanga exclaimed:

"If Zureda and I weren't pals----"

Silence. The silversmith added, warming to the subject:

"Rafaela, tell me the truth. Isn't it true that Amadeo stands in our way?"

She peered closely at him, and afterward raised her handkerchief to her eyes. She gave him no other answer. And nothing more happened, just then.

* * * * *

During the monotonous passage of a few more days, Manolo Berlanga gradually realized that Rafaela had big, expressive eyes, small feet with high insteps and a most pleasant walk. He noted that her breasts were firm and full; and he even thought he could detect in her an extremely coquettish desire to appear attractive in his eyes. At the end of it all, the silversmith fully understood his own intentions, which caused him both joy and fear.

"She's got me going," he thought. "She's certainly got me going! Say, I'm crazy about that woman!"

At last, one evening, the ill-restrained passion of the man burst into an overwhelming torrent. On that very night, Zureda was going to come home. Hardly had Manolo Berlanga left the shop when he hurried to his lodgings. He had no more than reached the front room when--no longer able to restrain his evil thoughts--he asked:

"Has Amadeo got here, yet?"

"He'll be here in about fifteen minutes," answered Rafaela. "It's nine o'clock, now. The train's already in. I heard it whistle."

Berlanga entered the dining-room and saw that the young woman was making up his bed. He approached her.

"Want any help?" he asked.

"No, thanks!"

Suddenly, without knowing what he was about, he grabbed her round the waist. She tried to defend herself, turning away, pushing him from her. But, kissing her desperately, he murmured:

"Come now, quick, quick--before he gets here!"

Then, after a brief moment of silent struggle:

"Darling! Don't you see? It had to be this way----!"

The wife of Zureda did not, in fact, put up much of a fight.

* * * * *

A year later, Rafaela gave birth to a boy. Manolo Berlanga stood godfather for it. Both Rafaela and Amadeo agreed on naming it Manolo Amadeo Zureda. The baptism was very fine; they spent more than two thousand _reals_[B] on it.

[B] About $100.

How pink-and-white, how joyous, how pretty was little Manolín! The engineer, congratulated by everybody, wept with joy.

III

Little Manolo was nearly three years old. He had developed into a very cunning chap, talkative and pleasant. In his small, plump, white face, that looked even whiter by contrast with the dead black of his hair, you could see distinctive characteristics of several persons. His tip-tilted nose and the roguish line of his mouth were his mother's. From his father, no doubt, he had inherited the thoughtful forehead and the heavy set of his jaws. And at the same time you were reminded of his godfather by his lively ways and by a peculiar manner he had of throwing out his feet, when he walked. It seemed almost as if the clever little fellow had set his mind on looking like everybody who had stood near his baptismal font, so that he could win the love of them all.

Zureda worshiped the boy, laughed at all his tricks and graces, and spent hours playing with him on the tiles of the passageway. Little Manolo pulled his mustache and necktie, mauled him and broke the crystal of his watch. Far from getting angry, the engineer loved him all the more for it, as if his strong, rough heart were melting with adoration.

One evening Rafaela went down to the station to say good-by to her husband, who was taking out the 7.05 express. In her arms she carried the boy. Pedro, the fireman, looked out of the cab, and made both the mother and son laugh by pulling all sorts of funny faces.

"Here's the toothache face!" he announced. "And here's the stomach-ache face!"

Then the bell rang, and they heard the vibrant whistle of the station-master.

"Here, give me the boy!" cried Zureda.

He wanted to kiss him good-by. The little fellow stretched out his tiny arms to his father.

"Take me! Take me, papa!" he entreated with a lisping tongue, his words full of love and charm.

Poor Zureda! The idea of leaving the boy, at that moment, stabbed him to the heart. He could not bear to let him go; he could not! Hardly knowing what he was about, he pressed the youngster to his breast with one hand, and with the other eased open the throttle. The train started. Rafaela, terrified, ran along the platform, screaming:

"Give him, give him to me!"

But already, even though Zureda had wanted to give him back, it was too late. Rafaela ran to the end of the platform, and there she had to stop. Pedro laughed and gesticulated from the blackness of the tender, bidding her farewell.

The young woman went back home, in tears. Manolo Berlanga had just got home. He had been drinking and was in the devil's own humor.

"Well, what's up now?" he demanded.

Inconsolable, sobbing, Rafaela told him what had happened.

"Is _that_ all?" interrupted the silversmith. "Say, you're crazy! If he's gone, so much the better. Now he'll leave us in peace, a little while. Damn good thing if he _never_ came back!"

Then he demanded supper.

"Come, now," he added, "cut out that sniveling! Give me something to eat. I'm in a hurry!"

Rafaela began to light the fire. But all the time she kept on crying and scolding. Her rage and grief dragged out into an interminable monologue:

"My darling--my baby--this is a great note! Think of that man taking him away, like that! The little angel will get his death o' cold. What a fool, what an idiot! And then they talk about the way women act! My precious! What'll I do, thinking about how cold he'll be, to-night? My baby, my heart's blood--my precious little sweetheart----!"

In her anger she tipped over the bottle of olive-oil. It fell off the stove and smashed on the floor. The rage of the woman became frenzied.

"Damn my soul if I know _what_ I'm doing!" she screeched. "Oh, that dirty husband of mine! I hope to God I never see him again. And now, how am I going to cook? I'll have to go down to the store. Say, I wish I'd never been born. We'd all be a lot better off! To Hell with such a----"

"Say, are you going to keep that rough-house up all night?" demanded the silversmith. Tired of hearing her noise, he had walked slowly into the kitchen. Now he stood there, black-faced, with his fists doubled up in the pockets of his jacket.

"I'll keep it up as long as I'm a mind to!" she retorted. "What are _you_ going to do about it?"

"You shut your jaw," vociferated Berlanga, "or I'll break it for you!"

Then his rage burst out. Joining a bad act to an evil threat, he rained a volley of blows on the head of his mistress. Rafaela stopped crying, and through her gritted teeth spat out a flood of vile epithets.

"You dirty dog!" she cried. "You pimp! All you know how to do is hang around women. Coward! Sissy! The only part of a man you've got is your face!"

He growled:

"Take that, and that, you sow!"

The disgusting scene lasted a long time. Terrified, the woman stopped her noise, and fought. Soon her nose and mouth were streaming blood. In the kitchen resounded a confused tumult of blows and kicks, as the silversmith drove his victim into a corner and beat her up. After the sorry job was done, Berlanga cleared out and never came back till one or two in the morning. Then he went to his room and turned in without making a light, no doubt ashamed of his cowardly deed.

For a while he tried to excuse himself. After all, thought he, the whole blame wasn't his. Rafaela's tirade and the wine he himself had drunk, had been more than half at fault. Men, he reflected, certainly do become brutes when they drink.

The young woman was in her bedroom. From time to time, Berlanga heard her sigh deeply. Her sighs were long and tremulous, like those of a child still troubled in its dreams after having cried itself to sleep.

The silversmith exclaimed:

"Oh, Rafaela!"

He had to call her twice more. At last, in a kind of groan, the young woman answered:

"Well, what do you want?"

Slyly and proudly the silversmith grinned to himself. That question of hers practically amounted to forgiveness. The sweet moment of reconciliation was close at hand.

"Come here!" he ordered.

Another pause followed, during which the will of the man and of the woman seemed to meet and struggle, with strange magnetism, in the stillness of the dark house.

"Come, girl!" repeated the smith, softening his voice.

Then he added, after a moment:

"Well, don't you want to come?"

Another minute passed; for all women, even the simplest and most ignorant, know to perfection the magic secret of making a man wait for them. But after a little while, Berlanga heard Rafaela's bare feet paddling along the hall. The young woman reached the bedroom of the silversmith, and in the shadows her exploring hands met the hands that Manolo was stretching out to greet her.

"What do you want, anyhow?" she demanded, humble yet resentful.

"Come to bed!"

She obeyed. Many kisses sounded, given her by the smith. After a while the man's voice asked in an endearing yet overmastering way:

"Now, then, are you going to be good?"

* * * * *

Amadeo Zureda came back a couple of days later, eminently well pleased. His boy had played the part of a regular little man during the whole run. He had never cried, but had eaten whatever they had given him and had slept like a top, on the coal. When Zureda kissed his wife, he noticed that she had a black-and-blue spot on her forehead.

"That looks like somebody had hit you," said he. "Have you been fighting with any one?"

She hesitated, then answered:

"No, no. Why, who'd I be fighting with? Much less coming to blows? The night you left, the oil-bottle fell off the sideboard, and when I went to pick it up I got this bump."

"How about that big scratch, there?"

"Which one? Oh, you mean on my lip? I did that with a pin."

"That's too bad! Take care of yourself, little lady!"

Manolo Berlanga was there and heard all this. He had to bite his mustache to hide a wicked laugh; but the engineer saw nothing at all. The poor man suspected nothing. He remained quite blind. Even if he had not loved Rafaela, his adoration of the boy would have been enough to fill his eyes with dust.

IV

Truth, however, is mighty and will prevail. After a while Zureda began to observe that something odd was going on about him. Slowly and without knowing why, he found a sort of distance separating him from his companions, who treated him and looked at him in a new way. You would almost have said they were trying to extort from his eyes the confession of some risqué secret he was doubtless keeping well covered up and hidden; a secret everybody knew. A complex sentiment of curiosity and silence isolated him from his friends and seemed to befog him with inexplicable ridicule. After a while he grew much puzzled by this phenomenon.

"I wonder if I've changed?" thought he. "Maybe I'm sick, without knowing it. Or can it be that I'm mighty ugly, and nobody dares to tell me so?"

Not far from the station, and near Manzanares Street, there was an eating-house where the porters, engineers and firemen were wont to foregather. This establishment belonged to Señor Tomás, who in his youth had been a toreador. The aplomb and force, as well as the stout-heartedness of that brave, gay profession still remained his. Señor Tomás talked very little, and for those who knew him well his words had the authority of print. He was a tall old fellow, with powerful hands and shoulders; he wore velveteen trousers and little Andalusian jackets of black stuff; and over the sash with which he masked his growing girth he strapped a wide leather belt with a silver buckle.

One evening Señor Tomás was enjoying the air at the door of his eating-house when Zureda passed by. The tavern-keeper beckoned the engineer; and when Zureda had come near, looked fixedly into his eyes and said:

"You and I have got to have a few words."

Zureda remained dumb. The secret, chill vibration of an evil presentiment had passed like a cold wind through his heart. Presently recovering speech, he answered: