Chapter 3

"Any time you say so."

They reëntered the tavern, which just then was almost without patrons. A high wooden shelf, painted red and covered with bottles, ran about the room. On the wall was hung the stuffed head of the bull that had given Señor Tomás the tremendous gash which had torn his leg open and had obliged him to lay aside forever the garb of a toreador. At the rear, the bartender had fallen asleep behind the polished bar, on which a little fountain of water was playing its perpetual music.

The two men sat down at a big table, and the tavern-keeper clapped his hands together.

"Hey you, there!" he cried.

The bartender woke up and came to him.

"What'll you have?" asked he.

"Bring some olives and two cups of wine."

A long pause followed. Señor Tomás with voracious pulls at his smoldering cigar set its tip glowing. A kind of gloomy preoccupation hardened his close-shaven face--a face that showed itself bronzed and fleshy beneath the white hair grandly combed and curled upon his forehead.

Presently he began:

"I hate to see two men fight, because if they're spirited it's bound to be serious. But still I can't bear to see a good man and a hard-working man be made a laughing-stock for everybody. Get me?"

Amadeo Zureda first grew pale and then red. Yes, he knew something was up. The old man had called him to tell him some terrible mystery. He felt that the strange feeling of vacancy all about him, which he had been sensing for some time, was at last going to be explained. He trembled. Something black, something vast was closing over his head; it might be one of those fearful tragedies that sometimes cut a human life in twain.

"I don't know how to talk, and I don't like to talk," went on the tavern-keeper. "That's why I don't beat round the bush, but I call a spade a spade. Yes, sir, I call things by their right names. Because in this world, Amadeo--you mark my words--everything's got a name."

"That's so, Señor Tomás."

"All right. And I'm one of those fellows that go right after the truth the way I used to go after the bull--go the quickest way, which is the best way, because it's the shortest."

"That's right, too."

"Well, then. I like you first-rate, Amadeo. I know you're a worker, and I know you're one of those honest men that wouldn't stand for any crooked work to turn a dollar. And I know, too, you're a man that knows how to use his fists and how to run up the battle-flag of the soul, when you have to. I'm sure of all this. And by the same token, I won't let anybody make fun of you."

"Thanks, Señor Tomás."

"All right! Now, then, in my house, right here, people are saying your wife is thick with Manolo Berlanga!"

The eyes of the tavern-keeper and the engineer met. They remained fixed, so, a moment. Then the eyes of Zureda opened wide, seemed starting from their sockets. Suddenly he jumped up, and his square finger-nails fairly sank into the wood of the table. His white lips, slavering, stammered in a fit of rage:

"That's a lie, a damned lie, Señor Tomás! I'll cut your heart out for that! Yes, if the Virgin herself came down and told me that, I'd cut her heart out, too! God, what a lie!"

The tavern-keeper remained entirely self-possessed. Without even a change of expression he answered:

"All right! Find out what's true or false in this business. For you know there's no difference between the truth and a lie that everybody's telling. And if you decide there's nothing to this except what I say, come and tell me, for I'm right here and everywhere to back up my words!"

The tavern-keeper grew silent, and Amadeo Zureda remained motionless, struck senseless, gaping.

After a few minutes his ideas began to calm down again, and as they grew quiet they coordinated themselves; then the engineer felt an unwholesome and resistless curiosity to know everything, to torture himself digging out details.

"You mean to tell me," asked he, "that they've talked about that, right here?"

"Right on the spot, sir!"

"When?"

"More than once, and more than twenty times; and they say worse than that, too. They say Berlanga beats your wife, and you're wise to everything, and have been from the beginning. And they say you stand for it, to have a good thing, because this Berlanga fellow helps you pay the rent."

A couple of porters came in, and interrupted the conversation. Señor Tomás ended up with:

"Well now, you know all about it!"

When Zureda left the tavern, his first impulse was to go home and put it up to Rafaela. Either with soft words or with a stick he might get something about Berlanga out of her. But presently he changed his mind. Affairs of this kind can't be hurried much. It is better to go slow, to wait, to get information bit by bit and all by one's self. When he reached the station it was six o'clock. He met Pedro on the platform.

"Which engine have we got to-day?" asked Amadeo.

"Nigger," answered the fireman.

"The devil! It just had to be her, eh?"

That run was terrible indeed, packed full of inward struggles and of battles with the rebellious locomotive--an infernal run that Zureda remembered all his life.

With due regard for the prudent scheme that he had mapped out, the engineer set himself to observing the way his wife and Manolo had of talking to each other. After greatly straining his attention, he could find nothing in the cordial frankness of their relations that seemed to pass the limits of good friendship. From the time when Berlanga had stood godfather for little Manolo, Amadeo had begged them to use "thee" and "thou" to each other, and this they had done. But this familiarity seemed quite brother-and-sisterly; it seemed justified by the three years they had been living in the same house, and could hardly be suspected of hiding any guilty secret.

None the less, the jealousy of Zureda kept on growing, rooting itself in every pretext, and using even the most minor thing to inflame and color with vampire suspicion every thought of the engineer. The notion kept growing in Zureda; it became an obsession which made him see the dreaded vision constantly, just as through another obsession, Berlanga's desire for Rafaela had been born.

At last Amadeo became convinced that his skill as a spy was very poor. He lacked that astuteness, those powers of detection and that divining instinct which, in a kind of second sight, makes some men get swiftly and directly at the bottom of things. In view of his blunt character, unfitted for any kind of diplomatic craft, he thought it better to confront the matter face to face.

As soon as he had come by this resolution, his uneasiness grew calm. A sedative feeling of peace took possession of his heart. The engineer passed that day quietly reading, waiting for night to come. Rafaela was sewing in the dining-room, with little Manolo asleep on her lap. Half an hour before supper, Zureda tiptoed to their bedroom and took from the little night-table his heavy-bladed, horn-handled hunting knife--the knife he always carried on his runs. After that he put on a flat cap, tied a muffler round his neck--for the evening was cold--and started to leave the house. In the emptiness of the hallway his heavy, determined footfalls, echoing, seemed to waken something deadly.

A bit surprised, Rafaela asked:

"Aren't you going to eat supper here?"

"Yes," he answered, "but I'm just going out to stretch my legs a little. I'll be right back."

He kissed his wife and the boy, mentally taking a long farewell of them, and went out.

In Señor Tomás' tavern he found Manolo Berlanga playing _tute_ with several friends. The silversmith was drunk, and his arrogant, defiant voice dominated the others. Slowly, with a careless and taciturn air, the engineer approached the group.

"Good evening, all," said he.

At first, no one answered him, for everybody's attention was fixed on the wayward come-and-go of the cards. When the game was done, one of the players exclaimed:

"Hello there, Amadeo! I didn't see _you_! But I saw your wife and kid yesterday. Some boy! And that's a pretty woman you've got, too. I don't say that just because you're here. It's true. Anybody can see you make all kinds of money, and spend it all on your wife!"

"Yes, and if he didn't," put in Berlanga, offering Zureda a glass of wine, "there'd be plenty more who would. How about that, Amadeo?"

Zureda remained impassive. He gulped the wine at one swallow. Then he ordered a bottle for all hands.

"Come on, now, I'll go you a game of _mus_," he challenged Berlanga. "Antolín, here, will be my partner."

The silversmith accepted.

"Go to it!" said he.

The players all sat down around the table, and the game began.

"I'll open up."

"Pass."

"I'll stay in."

"I'm out."

"I'll stick."

"I'll raise that!"

"I renig!"

Now and then the players stopped for a drink, and a few daring bets brought out bursts of laughter.

"Whose deal, now?"

"Mine!"

All at once Amadeo, who was looking for some excuse to get into a row with the silversmith, cheated openly and took the pot. Manolo saw him cheat. Incensed, he threw his cards on the floor.

"Here now, that don't go!" he cried. "I don't care if we _are_ friends, you can't get away with _that_!"

All the other players, angered, backed up the silversmith.

"No, sir! No, that don't go, here!" they echoed.

Very quietly the engineer demanded:

"Well, what have _I_ done?"

"You threw away this card, the five o' clubs," replied Berlanga, "and slipped yourself a king, that you needed! That's all. You're cheating!"

The engineer answered the furious insult of the silversmith with a blow in the face. They tackled each other like a couple of cats. Chairs and table rolled on the floor. Señor Tomás came running, and he and the other players succeeded in separating them. A crowd, attracted by the noise of the fight, gathered like magic. The tumult of these curiosity-seekers helped Amadeo hide his words as he and Manolo left the tavern. He said in his companion's ear:

"I'll be waiting for you in front of San Antonio de la Florida."

"Suits _me_!"

And, a few minutes later, they met at the indicated spot.

"Let's go where nobody can see us," said the engineer.

"I'll go anywhere you like," answered Berlanga. "Lead the way!"

They crossed the river and came to the little fields out at Fuente de la Teja. The shadows were thicker there, under the trees. At a likely-looking spot the two men stopped. Zureda peered all about him. His eyes, used to penetrating dark horizons, seemed to grow calm. The two men were all alone.

"I've brought you here," said the engineer, "either to kill you or have you kill me."

Berlanga was pretty tipsy. Brave in his cups, he peered closely at the other. He kept his hands in the pockets of his coat. His brow was frowning; his chin was thrust out and aggressive. He had already guessed what Zureda was going to ask him, and the idea of being catechized revolted his pride.

"It looks to me," he swaggered, "like you and I were going to have a few words."

And immediately he added, as if he could read the thought of Zureda:

"They've been telling you I'm thick with Rafaela, and you're after the facts."

"Yes, that's it," answered the engineer.

"Well, they aren't lying. What's the use of lying? It's so, all right."

Then he held his peace and looked at Zureda. The engineer's eyes were usually big and black, but now by some strange miracle of rage they had become small and red. Neither man made any further speech. There was no need of any. All the words they might have hurled at each other would have been futile. Zureda recoiled a few steps and unsheathed his knife. The silversmith snicked open a big pocket blade.

They fell violently on each other. It was a prehistoric battle, body to body, savage, silent. Manolo was killed. He fell on his back, his face white, his mouth twisted in an unforgettable grimace of pain and hate.

The engineer ran away and was already crossing the bridge, when a woman who had been following him at a short distance began to cry:

"Catch him! Catch him! He's just killed a man!"

A couple of policemen, at the door of an inn, stopped Zureda. They arrested him and handcuffed him. He made no resistance.

Rafaela went to see him in jail. The engineer, because of his love for her and for the boy, received her with affection. He assured her he had got into a fight with Manolo over a card-game. Fourteen or fifteen months later he maintained the same story, in court. He claimed he and Manolo had been playing _mus_, and that by way of a joke on his friends he had thrown away one of the cards in his hand and slipped himself another. Then he said Berlanga had denounced him as a cheat; they had quarreled, and had challenged each other.

Thus spoke Amadeo Zureda, in his chivalric attempt not to throw even the lightest shadow on the good name of the woman he adored. Who could have acted more nobly than he? The state's attorney arraigned him in crushing terms, implacably.

And the judge gave him twenty years at hard labor.

V

Scourged by poverty, which was not long in arriving, Rafaela had to move away to a little village of Castile, where she had relatives. These were poor farming people, making a hard fight for existence. By way of excuse for her coming to them, the young woman made up a story. She said that Amadeo had got into some kind of trouble with his employers, had been discharged and had gone to Argentina, for there he had heard engineers got excellent pay. After that, she had decided to leave Madrid, where food and lodging were very dear. She ended her tale judiciously:

"As soon as I hear from Amadeo that he's got a good job, I'm going out there to him."

Her relatives believed her, took pity on her and found her work. Every day, with the first light of morning, Rafaela went down to the river to wash. The river was about half a kilometer from the little village. By washing and ironing, at times, or again by picking up wood in the country and selling it, Rafaela managed, with hard, persistent toil, to make four or five _reals_[C] a day.

[C] Twenty or twenty-five cents.

Two years passed. By this time the neighbors were beginning to find out from the mail-carrier that the addresses on all the letters coming to Rafaela were written by the same hand and all bore the postmark of Ceuta. This news got about and set things buzzing. The young woman put an end to folks' gossip by very sensibly confessing the truth that Amadeo was in prison there. She said a gambling-scrape had got him into trouble. In her confession she adopted a resigned and humble manner, like a model wife who, in spite of having suffered much, nevertheless forgives the man she loves, and pardons all the wrongs done her. People called her unfortunate. They tattled a while, and then took pity on her and accepted her.

Worn out by time and hardships, her former beauty--piquant in a way, though a bit common--soon faded away. The sun tanned her skin; the dust of the country roads got into her hair, once so clean and wavy; hard work toughened and deformed her hands, which in better days she had well cared for. She gave over wearing corsets, and this hastened the ruin of her body. Slowly her breasts grew flaccid, her abdomen bulged, her whole figure took on heavy fullnesses. And her clothes, too, bit by bit got torn and spoiled. Her petticoats and stockings, her neat patent-leather boots bought in happier days, disappeared sadly, one after the other. Rafaela, who had lost all desire to be coquettish or to please men, let herself slide into poverty; and, in the end, she sank so low as to slop round the village streets, barefooted.

This disintegration of her will coincided with a serious loss and confusion of her memory. The poor woman began to forget everything; and the few recollections she still retained grew so disjointed, so vague that they no longer were able to arouse any stimulating emotion in her. She had never really loved Berlanga. What she had felt for him had been only a kind of caprice, an unreasoning will o' the wisp passion; but this amorous dalliance had soon faded out. And the only reason she had kept on with the silversmith had been because she had been afraid of him and had been weak-willed. The smith, moreover, had become jealous and had often beaten her. Thus his tragic death, far from causing her any grief, had come to her as an agreeable surprise. It had quieted her, rested her, freed her.

If the punishment of Zureda and his confinement in prison walls wounded her deeply, it was not on account of her broken love for the engineer. No, rather was it because this disaster had disturbed the easy, comfortable rhythm of her life and because the exile of her husband had meant misery for her, poverty, the irremediable overthrow of her whole future.

After the crisis which had wrecked her home, Rafaela--hardly noticing it, herself--had grown stupid, old and of defective memory. The many violent and dramatic shocks she had borne in so short a time had annihilated her mediocre spirit. She suffered no remorse and had no very clear idea as to whether her past conduct had been good or bad. It was as if her conscience had sunk away into unthinking stupor. The only thing that still remained in her, unchanged, was the maternal instinct of living and working for little Manolo, so that he, too, might live.

True enough, on certain days the wretched woman drank deeply the cup of gall, as certain memories returned. Now and then there came to her a poisoned vision of black recollections that rose about her, stifling her. This usually happened down at the river-bank, while she was washing, at times of mental abstraction caused by her monotonous and purely mechanical toil. Then her eyes would fill with tears, which slowly rolled down her cheeks and fell upon her hands, now reddened by hard labor and the cold caress of the water. The other washwomen, all about her, observed her grief, and fell to whispering:

"See how she's crying?"

"Poor thing!"

"Poor? Well--it was her own doing. Fate is just. It gives everybody what they deserve. Why didn't she look out who she was marrying?"

From time to time away down at the end of the valley, shut in behind an undulating line of blue hills, a train passed by. Its strident whistle, enlarged and flung about hither and yon by echoes, broke the silence of the plain. Some few of the younger washwomen usually sat up on their heels, then, and followed with their eyes the precipitate on-rushing of the train. You could behold a dreaming sadness in their eyes, a vision of far-off, unseen cities. But Rafaela never raised her head to look at the train. The shrieking whistle tore at her ears with the vibration of a familiar voice. She kept on washing, while her tear-wet eyes seemed to be peering at the mysteries of forgetfulness in the passing water.

Despite the great physical and moral decline of the poor woman, she did not fail to waken thoughts and hopes in a certain man. To her aspired a fellow named Benjamin, by trade a shoemaker. He was already turning fifty years, was a widower and had two sons in the army.

This Benjamin's affairs went along only so-so, because not all the people of the village could afford to wear shoes, and those who could afford them did not feel any great need of wearing fine or new ones. Rafaela washed and mended his clothes, and ironed a shirt for him, every saint's-day. He paid her little, but regularly, for these services; and gradually friendship grew up between them. This mutual liking, which was at first impersonal and calm, finally grew in the shoemaker's heart till it became the fire of love.

"If you were only willing," Señor Benjamin often said to Rafaela, "we could come to an understanding. You're all alone. So am I. Well, why not live together?"

She smiled, with that disillusion which comes to a soul that life has bit by bit ravaged of all its dreams.

"You're crazy to talk that way, Benjamin," she would answer.

"Why?"

"Oh, because."

"Come now, explain that! Why am I crazy?"

Rafaela did not want to annoy the man, because she would thus lose a customer, and so she gave him an evasive answer:

"Why, I'm already old."

"Not for me!"

"I'm ugly!"

"That's a matter of taste. You suit _me_ to a T."

"Thanks. But, what would people say? And suppose we had any children, Benjamin! What would they think of us?"

"Oh, there's a thousand ways to cover it all up. You just take a shine to me, and I'll fix everything else."

Rafaela promised to think it over; and every night when she came home from work, Benjamin jokingly asked her, from his door:

"Well, neighbor, how about it?"

"I'm still thinking it over," she answered, with a laugh.

"It seems to be pretty hard for you to decide."

"It surely is!"

"Yes, but are you going to get it settled?"

"How do _I_ know, Benjamin? Sometimes I think one thing, and sometimes another. Time will tell!"

But the soul of Rafaela lay dead. Nothing could revive her illusions. The shoemaker, after many efforts, had to give her up. And always after that, when he saw her pass along, he would heave a sigh in an absurd, romantic manner.

On the first of every month, Rafaela always wrote a four-page letter to Zureda, containing all the petty details of her quiet, humdrum life. It was by means of these letters, written on commercial cap, that the prisoner learned the rapid physical growth of little Manolo. By the time the boy had reached twelve years he had become rebellious, quarrelsome and idle. He was still in the pot-hook class, at school. Stone-throwing was one of his favorite habits. One day he injured another boy of his age so severely that the constable gathered him in, and nothing but the fatherly intervention of the priest saved him from a night in the lock-up.

Rafaela always ended up the paragraphs thus, in which she described the fierce wildness of the boy:

"I tell you plainly, I can't manage him."

This seemed a confession of weariness, that outlined both a threat and a prophecy.

The prisoner wrote her, in one of his letters:

"The last jail pardon, that you may have read about in the papers, let out many of my companions. I had no such luck. But, anyhow, they cut five years off my time. So there are only six years more between us."

Regularly the letters came and went between Rafaela and the prisoner at Ceuta. Two years more drew to their close.

But evil fortune had not yet grown weary of stamping its heel on Amadeo Zureda's honest shoulders.

"Please forgive me, dear Rafaela," the prisoner wrote again, after a while, "the new sorrow I must cause you. But by the life of our son I swear I could not avoid the misfortune which most expectedly is going to prolong our separation, for I don't know how long.

"As you may guess, there are few saints among the rough crowd here, that are scraped up from all the prisons in Spain. Though I have to live among them, I don't consider them my equals. For that reason I try to keep away from them, and have nothing to do with their rough mirth or noisy quarrels. Well, it happened that the end of last week a smart-Aleck of a fellow came in, an Andalusian. He had been given twelve years for killing one man and badly injuring another. As soon as this fellow saw me, he took me for a boob he could make sport of, and lost no chance of poking fun at me. I kept quiet, and--so as not to get into any mix-up with him--turned my back on him.

"Yesterday, at dinner, he tried to pick a quarrel. Some of the other prisoners laughed and set him on to me.

"'Look here, Amadeo,' said he. 'What are you in for?'

"I answered, looking him square in the eyes:

"'For having killed a man.'

"'And what did you kill him for?' he insisted.