Chapter 4

"I said nothing, and then he added something very coarse and ugly that I won't repeat. It's enough for you to know your name was mixed up in it. That's why your name was the last word his mouth ever uttered. I drew my knife--you know that in spite of all the care they take, and all their searches, we all go armed--and cried:

"'Look out for yourself, now, because I'm going to kill you!'

"Then we fought, and it was a good fight, too, because he was a brave man. But his courage was of no use to him. He died on the spot.

"Forgive me, dearest Rafaela of my soul, and make our boy forgive me, too. This makes my situation much worse, because now I shall have another trial and I don't know what sentence I'll get. I realize it was very bad of me to kill this man, but if I hadn't done it he would have killed me, which would have been much worse for all of us."

Several months after, Zureda wrote again:

"I have been having my trial. Luckily all the witnesses testified in my behalf, and this, added to the good opinion the prison authorities have of me, has greatly improved my position. The indictment was terrible, but I'm not worrying much about that. To-morrow I shall know my sentence."

All the letters of Amadeo Zureda were like this, peaceful and noble, seemingly dictated by the most resigned stoicism. He never let anything find its way into them which might remind Rafaela of her fault. In these pages, filled with a strong, even writing, there was neither reproach, dejection, nor despairing impatience. They seemed to be the admirable reflection of an iron will which had been taught by misfortune--the most excellent mother of all knowledge--to understand the dour secret of hoping and of waiting.

VI

The very same day when Amadeo Zureda got out of jail, he received from Rafaela a letter which began thus:

"Little Manolo was twenty years old, yesterday."

The one-time engineer left the boat from Africa at Valencia, passed the night at an inn not far from the railroad station, and early next morning took the train which was to carry him to Ecks. After so many years of imprisonment, the old convict felt that nervous restlessness, that lack of self-confidence, that cruel fear of destiny which men ill-adapted to their environment are accustomed to feel every time life presents itself to them under a new aspect. Defeat at last makes men cowardly and pessimistic. They recall everything they have suffered and the uselessness of all their struggles, and they think: "This, that I am now beginning, will turn out badly for me too, like all the rest."

Amadeo Zureda had altered greatly. His white mustache formed a sad contrast with his wrinkled face, tanned by the African sun. The expression of an infinite pain seemed to deepen the peaceful gaze of his black eyes. The vertical wrinkle in his brow had deepened until it seemed a scar. His body, once strong and erect, had grown thin; and as he walked he bent somewhat forward.

The rattling uproar of the train and the swift succession of panoramas now unrolling before his eyes recalled to the memory of Zureda the joys of those other and better times when he had been an engineer--joys now largely blotted out by the distance of long-gone years. He remembered Pedro, the Andalusian fireman, and those two engines, "Sweetie" and "Nigger," on which he had worked so long. An inner voice seemed asking him: "What can have become of all this?"

He also thought about his house. He mentally built up again its façade, beheld its balconies and evoked the appearance of each room. His memory, clouded by the grim and brutalizing life of the prison, had never dipped so profoundly into the past, nor had it ever brushed away the dust from his old memories and so clearly reconstructed them. He thought about his son, about Rafaela and Manolo Berlanga, seeming to behold their faces and even their clothing just as they had been long ago; and he felt surprised that revocation of the silversmith's face should produce no pain in him. At that moment and in spite of the irreparable injury which had been done him, he felt no hatred of Berlanga. All the rancor which until then had possessed him seemed to sink down peacefully into an unknown and ineffable emotion of pity and forgetfulness. The poor convict once more examined his conscience, and felt astonished that he could no longer find any poison there. May it not be, after all, that liberty reforms a man?

At Játiva a man got into the car, a man already old, whose face seemed to the former engineer to bear some traces of a friendly appearance. The new-comer also, on his side, looked at Zureda as if he remembered him. Thus both of them little by little silently drew together. In the end they studied each other with warm interest, as if sure of having sometime known each other before. Amadeo was the first to speak.

"It seems to me," said he, "that we have already seen each other somewhere, years ago."

"That was just what I was thinking, myself," answered the other.

"The fact is," went on the engineer, "I'm sure we must have talked to each other, many times."

"Yes, yes!"

"We must have been friends, sometime."

"Probably."

And they continued looking at each other, enwrapped by the same thought. Zureda asked:

"Have you ever lived in Madrid?"

"Yes, ten or twelve years."

"Where?"

"Near the Estación del Norte, where I was an employee."

"Say no more!" exclaimed Zureda. "I worked for the same company, myself. I was an engineer."

"On what line?"

"Madrid to Bilbao."

Slowly and silently memories began to rise and group themselves together in the enormous, black forgetfulness of those twenty years. Amadeo Zureda took out his tobacco-box and offered tobacco to his companion. Whatever seemed to have been lacking to awaken memory, in the other's appearance or in his voice, was now instantly supplied as the engineer saw him take the fine-cut, roll a cigarette, light it and afterward thrust it into the left corner of his mouth. The memories of the old convict were flooded with light.

"Enough of this!" cried he. "You are Don Adolfo Moreno!"

"That's right, I'm the man!"

"You were a conductor on the Asturias line when I worked on the one running to Bilbao. Don't you remember me? Amadeo Zureda?"

"Yes, indeed!"

The two men embraced each other.

"Why, I used to say 'thee' and 'thou' to you!" cried Don Adolfo.

"Yes, yes, I remember that, too. I remember everything, now. We were good friends once, eh? Well, time seems to have made some pretty big changes in both of us."

When the joy of the first moments of meeting had been somewhat allayed, the former conductor and the old engineer grew sad as they recalled the many bitter experiences life had dealt them.

"I've already heard of your misfortune," said Don Adolfo, "and I was mighty sorry to hear about it. Sometimes a youthful moment of madness, that lasts only a minute, will cost a man his whole future. Why did you do it?"

Stolidly Zureda answered:

"Oh, it was a quarrel over cards."

"Yes, that's so; they told me about it."

Amadeo breathed easy. The conductor knew nothing; and it seemed probable that many others should be as ignorant as he about what had driven him to kill Manolo. Don Adolfo asked:

"Where have you been?"

"At Ceuta."

"A long time?"

"Twenty years and some months."

"The deuce! You've just come from down there?"

"Yes, sir."

"It's evident to me," continued Don Adolfo, "you've suffered a great deal more than I have; but you mustn't think I have been lucky, either. Life is a wild animal that drags down every one who tries to grapple with it, and yet people keep right on struggling. I'm a widower. My poor wife has been dust for nearly fifteen years. The eldest of my three daughters got married, and both the others died. Now I'm on a pension and live at Ecks with a sister-in-law, the widow of my brother Juan. I don't think you remember him."

Little by little, and with many beatings about the bush, because confidence is a timid quality which soon takes flight from those scourged by misfortune, the ex-convict told his plans. He hoped to establish himself at Ecks, with his wife. He had brought about two thousand pesetas from prison, with which he hoped to buy a little house and a bit of good land.

"I don't know beans about farming," he added, "but that's like everything else. You learn by doing. Moreover, my son, who has grown up in the town, will help me a great deal."

Don Adolfo wrinkled his brow with a grave and reflective expression, like a man who is remembering something.

"From what you say," he exclaimed, "I think I know who your wife is."

The old engineer felt shame. The bleeding image of his misfortune was hard to wipe from his memory. The mention of his wife had freshened it. He answered;

"You probably do know her. The village must be very small."

"Very small, indeed. What's your wife's name?"

"Rafaela."

"Yes, yes," answered Don Adolfo. "Rafaela's the woman. I know her well. As for Manolo, your son, I know him too."

Amadeo Zureda trembled. He felt afraid, and cold. For a few moments he remained silent, without knowing what to say. Don Adolfo continued with rough frankness:

"Your Manolo is a pretty tough nut, and he gives his poor mother a mighty hard time. She's a saint, that woman. I think he even beats her. Well, I won't tell you any more."

Pale and trembling, putting down a great desire to weep which had just come over him, Amadeo asked:

"Is it possible? Can he be as bad as that?"

"I tell you he's a dandy!" repeated Don Adolfo. "If he died, the devil would think a good while before taking him. He's a drunkard and a gambler, always chasing women and fighting. He's the limit!" After a moment he added: "Really, he don't seem like a son of yours, at all."

Amadeo Zureda made no answer. Looking out of the car window, he tried to distract himself with the landscape. The old conductor's words had crushed him. He had been ignorant of all this, for Rafaela in her letters had said nothing about it. He was astonished at realizing how evil destiny was attacking him, denying him that rest which every hard-working man, no matter how poor, is at last entitled to.

Retracing the hateful pathway of his memories, he reached the source of all his misfortunes. Twenty years before, when Señor Tomás had told him of the relations between Rafaela and Manolo, he too had declared: "They say he beats her."

What connection might there be between these statements, which seemed to weave a nexus of hate between the son and the dead lover? Once more the words of the old conductor sounded in his ears, and prophetically took hold upon his soul:

"Manolo does not appear to be your son."

Without having read Darwin, Amadeo Zureda instinctively sought explanation and consolation in the laws of heredity, for the pain now consuming him. Never had he, even when a young fellow, been given to drink or cards. He had not been fond of the women, nor had he been a meddler and bully. And how had such degradations been able to engraft themselves into the blood of his son?

Don Adolfo and Zureda got out at the station of Ecks. Afternoon was drawing to its close. On the platform there were only six or seven persons. The former conductor waved his hand to a woman and to a young man, drawing near. He cried:

"There are your folks!"

This time seeing Rafaela, Amadeo did not hesitate. It was she indeed, despite her protuberant abdomen, her sad fat face, and her white hair. It was she!

"Rafaela!" cried he. He would have known her among a thousand other women. They fell into each other's arms, weeping with that enormous joy and pain felt by all who part in youth and meet again in old age, with the whole of life behind them. After the greeting with his wife was at an end, the engineer embraced Manolo.

"What a fine fellow you are!" he stammered, when the beating of his heart, growing a little more calm, let him speak.

Don Adolfo said good-by.

"I'm in a hurry. We'll see each other to-morrow!" He saluted, and walked away.

Amadeo Zureda, with Rafaela at his right and Manolo at his left, quitted the station.

"Is the town very far away?" asked he.

"Hardly two kilometers," she answered.

"All right then, let's walk."

Slowly they made their way down the road that stretched, winding, between two vast reaches of brown, plowed land. Far in the distance, lighted by the dying sun, the little hamlet was visible; that miserable collection of huts about which Zureda had thought so many times, dreaming that there he should find the sweet refuge of peaceful forgetfulness and of redemption.

VII

After Amadeo came to Ecks, Rafaela went no longer to the river. The former engineer was unwilling that his wife should toil. They had enough for all to live on for a while, with what he had made in prison. They spoke not of the past. You might almost have thought they had forgotten it. Why remember? Zureda had forgiven everything. Rafaela, moreover, was no longer the same. The gay happiness of her eyes had gone dead; the waving blackness of her hair and the girlish quickness of her body had vanished. There was a melancholy abandonment, heavy with remorse, in her sad and flabby face, in the humility of her look, in the slow, round fatness of her whole body.

The ex-convict followed the advice of Don Adolfo and gave up all idea of devoting himself to farming. In the best street of the village, near the church, he set up a general repair-shop where he took in both wood and iron work. There he shod a mule, mended a cart or put a new coulter to a plow, with equal facility.

He had not been established long when his modest little business began to pick up and be a real money-maker. Very soon his customers increased. The disquieting story of his imprisonment seemed forgotten. Everybody liked him, for he was good, affable and pleasant, in a melancholy way. He paid his little debts promptly, and worked hard.

Zureda felt life once more grow calm. Slowly his future, which till then had looked stormy, commenced to appear a land of hospitality, comfortable and good. The threat of to-morrow, which makes so many men uneasy, had ceased to be a problem for him. His future was already founded, laid out, foreseen. The fifteen or twenty years that still might remain to him, he hoped to pass in the loving accumulation of a little fortune to leave his Rafaela.

He got up with the sun and worked industriously all day, driven by this ambition. In the evening he took a dog that Don Adolfo had given him, and went wandering in the outskirts of the village. One of his favorite walks was out to the cemetery. He often pushed open the old gate, which never was quite closed, and in the burial-ground sat himself down upon a broken mill-stone which happened to be there. Seated thus, he liked to smoke a cigarette.

Many crosses were blackening with age, in the tall grass that covered the earth. The old man often called up memories of the time when he had been an engineer. He remembered the prison, too, and his tired will seemed to tremble. Peacefully he looked about him. Here, sometime, would be his bed. What rest, what silence! And he breathed deep, enthralled by the rare and calming joy of willingness to die. Here inside the old wall of mud bricks, reddened by the setting sun--here in this garden of forgetfulness--how well one ought to sleep!

Only one trouble disturbed and embittered the peaceful decline of Amadeo Zureda. This trouble was his son, Manolo. Through an excess of fatherly love, doubtless mistaken, he had the year before got Manolo exempted from military service. The boy's wild, vicious character was fanatically rebellious against all discipline. In vain Zureda sought to teach him a trade. Threats and entreaties, as well as all kinds of wise advice, were shattered against the invincibly gypsy-like will of the young fellow.

"If you don't want to support me," Manolo often used to say, "let me go. Kick me out. I'll get by, on my own hook."

Often and often Manolo vanished from the little town. He stayed away for days at a time, engaged in mysterious adventures. People coming in from neighboring villages reported him as given over to gaming. One night he showed up with a serious wound in the groin, a deep knife-stab.

"Who did that to you?" demanded Zureda.

The youth answered:

"Nobody's business. _I_ know who it is. Sometime or other he'll get his, all right!"

To save himself from police investigation, Zureda said nothing about it. For some weeks, Manolo kept quiet. But early one morning a couple of rural guards found the body of a man on the river-bank. His body was covered with stabs. All investigations to find the murderer were fruitless. The crime remained unavenged. Only Amadeo--who just a bit after the discovery of the body had discovered Manolo washing a blood-stained handkerchief in a water-jar--was certain that his son had done this murder.

Once more the sinister words of Don Adolfo recurred to his mind, bruising him, maddening him, seeming to bore into his very brain:

"He does not seem to be your son, at all!"

Amadeo pondered this, and decided it was true. The boy did not seem his. Manolo's outlaw way of living did not stop here. Taking advantage of his mother's love and of the quiet disposition of Amadeo, almost every day he showed the very greatest need of money.

"I've got to have a hundred pesetas," he would say. "I've just _got_ to have them! If you people don't come across, well, all right! I'll get them, some way. But perhaps you'll be sorry then, you didn't give them to me!"

He was mad for enjoyment. When his mother tried to warn and advise him, saying: "Why don't you work, you young wretch? Don't you see how your father does?"--he would retort:

"I don't call _that_ living, to work! I'd rather go hang myself, than live the way the old man lives!"

You would have thought Rafaela was his slave, by the lack of decency and respect he showed her. When he called her, he would hardly condescend to look at her at all. He spoke little to his father, and what he said was rough and harsh. The worst boy in the world could not have acted with more insolence. His wild spirit, lusting pleasure, seemed to burn with an instinctive flame of hate.

One night when Amadeo came home from the Casino where he and Don Adolfo, with the druggist and a few other such-like worthies, were wont to meet every Saturday, he found the door of his shop ajar. This astonished him. He raised his voice and began to call:

"Manolo! You, Manolo!"

Rafaela answered him, from the back room of the house:

"He's not here."

"Do you know whether he's going to come back soon? I want to know, before locking up."

A short silence followed. After a bit, Rafaela answered:

"You'd better lock up, anyhow."

There seemed to be something like a sob of grief in the voice of the poor woman. The old engineer, alarmed by a presentiment of something terrible, strode through the shop and went on into the house. Rafaela was sitting in front of the stove, in the kitchen, her hands humbly crossed on her lap, her eyes full of tears, her white hair rumpled up, as if some parricide hand had furiously seized her head. Zureda took hold of his wife by the shoulders and forced her to get up.

"What--what's happened?" he stammered.

Rafaela's nose was all bloody, her forehead was bruised and her hands bore lacerations.

"What's the matter with you?" repeated the engineer.

Old and dull as were his eyes, now they blazed up again with that red lightning of death which, twenty years before, had sent him to prison. Rafaela was terrified, and tried to lie out of it.

"It's nothing, Amadeo," she stammered. "Nothing, I tell you. Let me tell you! I--I fell--that's the living truth!"

But Zureda shook the truth out of her with threats, almost with violence.

"Manolo's been beating you, eh? He has, hasn't he?"

She began to sob, still trying to deny it, not wanting to accuse her heart's darling. The old engineer repeated, trembling with rage:

"He beat you, eh? What?"

Rafaela took a long time to answer. She was afraid to speak, but finally she confessed everything.

"Yes, yes, he did. Oh--it's terrible!"

"What did he beat you for?"

"Because he wanted money."

"God! The swine!"

The rage and pain of the old convict burst out in a leonine roar, that filled the kitchen.

"He told you that?" demanded Amadeo. "Said he wanted money?"

"Yes."

"How much?"

"Twenty-five pesetas. I refused as long as I could. But what could I do? Oh, if you'd seen him then, you wouldn't have known him. I was awfully scared--thought he was going to kill me----"

As she said this, she covered her eyes with her hands. She seemed to be shutting out from them, together with the ugly vision of what had just happened, some other sight--the sight of something horrible, something long-past, something quite the same.

Zureda, afraid of showing the tumultuous rage in his heart, said nothing more. The most ominous memories crowded his mind. A long, long time ago, before he had gone to jail, Don Tomás in the course of an unforgettable conversation had told him that Manolo Berlanga maltreated Rafaela. And all these years afterward, when he was once more a free man, Don Adolfo had said the same thing about young Manolo. Remembering this strange agreement of opinions, Amadeo Zureda felt a bitter and inextinguishable hate against the whole race of the silversmith--a race accursed, it seemed, which had come into the world only to hurt and wound him in his dearest affections.

Next morning the old man, who had hardly slept more than an hour or two, woke early.

"What time is it?" asked he.

Rafaela had already risen. She answered:

"Almost six."

"Has Manolo come back?"

"Not yet."

The old engineer got out of bed, dressed as usual and went down to his shop. Rafaela kept watch on him. The apparent calm of the old man looked suspicious. Noon came, and Manolo did not return for dinner. Night drew on, nor did he come back to sleep. Zureda and his wife went to bed early. A few days drifted along.

Sunday morning, Zureda was sitting at the door of his shop. It was just eleven. Women, some with mantillas, others with but a simple kerchief knotted about their heads, were going to mass. High up in the Gothic steeple, the bells were swinging, gay and clangorous. A neighbor, passing, said to the old engineer:

"Well, Manolo's showed up."

"When?" asked Zureda, phlegmatically.

"Last night."

"Where did you see him?"

"At Honorio's inn."

"A great one, that boy is! He's certainly some fine lad! Never came near _me_!"

The day drew on, without anything happening. Cautiously the engineer guarded against telling Rafaela that their son had returned. A little while before supper, giving her the excuse that Don Adolfo was waiting for him at the Casino, Zureda left the house and made his way to the inn where Manolo was wont to meet his rough friends. There he found him, indeed, gaming with cards.

"I've got something to say to you," said he.

The young man threw his cards on the table and got up. He was tall, slim and good-looking; and in the thin line of his lips and the penetrant gaze of his greenish eyes lay something bold, defiant.

The two men went out into the street, and, saying no word, walked to the outskirts of the town. When Amadeo thought they had come to a good place, he stopped and looked his son fair in the face.

"I've brought you out here," said he, "to tell you you're never coming back to my house. Understand me?"

Manolo nodded "Yes."

"I'm throwing you out," continued the old man. "Get that, too! I'm throwing you out, because I won't deal with a dog like you. I won't have one anywhere around! I tell you this not as father to son, but as one man to another, so you can come back at me if you want to. Understand? I'm ready for you! That's why I've brought you 'way out here."