The Torrent (Entre Naranjos)

From time to time a scraping sound or a jolt of the boat would bring him back to reality.

"Your tiller there!" Cupido would shout, without, however, taking his eyes from the water ahead. "Look out, Rafaelito, or we'll get smashed!"

The boat was indeed a good one, for any other, would long before have come to grief in those rapids jammed with rocks and debris.

They were around the city in no time. Few lighted windows were now to be seen. High, steep banks of slippery mud—quite unscalable—crested with walls, were slipping past on either hand, with an occasional palisade, the piles just emerging from the water. Somewhat ahead, the open river, where the two arms that girt the Old City reunited in what was now a vast lake!

The two men went on blindly. All normal landmarks were gone. The banks had disappeared, and in the blackness, beyond the red circle of torch light, they could make out only water and then more water—an immense incessantly rolling sheet that was taking them they knew not where. From time to time a black spot would show above the muddy surface; the crest of some submerged canebrake; the top of a tree; a strange, fantastic vegetation that seemed to be writhing in the gloom. The river, free now from the gorges and shallows around the city, had ceased its roaring. It seethed and swirled along in absolute silence, effacing all trace of the land. The two men felt like a couple of shipwrecked sailors adrift on a shoreless, sunless ocean, alone save for the reddish flame flickering at the prow, and the submerged treetops that appeared and vanished rapidly.

"Better begin to row, Cupido," said Rafael. "The current is very strong. We must be still in the river. Let's turn to the right and see if we can get into the orchards."

The barber bent to the oars, and the boat, slowly, on account of the current, came around and headed for a line of tree-tops that peered above the surface of the flood like seaweed floating on the ocean. Shortly the bottom began to scrape on invisible obstacles. Entanglements below were clutching at the keel, and it took some effort occasionally to get free. The lake was still dark and apparently shoreless, but the current was not so strong and the surface had stopped rolling. The two men knew they had reached dead water. What looked like dark, gigantic mushrooms, huge umbrellas, or lustrous domes, caught the reflection of the torch, at times. Those were orange-trees. The rescuers were in the orchards. But in which? How find the way in the darkness? Here and there the branches were too thick to break through and the boat would tip as if it were going over. They would back water, make a detour, or try another route.

They were going very slowly for fear of striking something, zig-zagging meanwhile to avoid snags. As a result they lost direction altogether, and could no longer say which way the river lay. Darkness and water everywhere! The submerged orange-trees, all alike, formed complicated lanes over the inundation, a labyrinth in which they grew momentarily more confused. They were now rowing about quite aimlessly.

Cupido was perspiring freely, under the hard work. The boat was moving slower and slower because of the branches catching at the keel.

"This is worse than the river," he murmured. "Rafael, you're facing forward. Can't you make out any light ahead?"

"Not a one!"

The torch would throw some huge clump of leaves into relief for a moment. When that was gone, the light would be swallowed up into damp, thick, empty space.

Thus they wandered about and about the flooded countryside. The barber's strength had given out and he passed the oars over to Rafael, who was also nearly exhausted.

How long had they been gone? Were they to stay there forever? And their minds dulled by fatigue and the sense of being lost, they imagined the night would never end—that the torch would go out and leave the boat a black coffin, for their corpses to float in eternally.

Rafael, who was now facing astern suddenly noticed a light on his left. They were going away from it; perhaps that was the house they had been so painfully searching for.

"It may be," Cupido agreed. "Perhaps we went by without seeing it, and now we're downstream, toward the sea.... But even if it is not the Blue House, what of it? The main thing is to find someone there. That's far better than wandering around here in the dark. Give me the oars, again Rafael. If that isn't doña Pepita's place, at least we'll find out where we are."

He pulled the boat around, and gradually they made their way through the treetops toward the light. They struck several snags, orchard fences, perhaps, or submerged walls—but the light kept growing brighter. Finally it had become a large red square across which dark forms were moving. Over the waters a golden, shimmering wake of light was streaming.

The torch from the boat brought out the lines of a broad house with a low roof that seemed to be floating on the water. It was the upper story of a building that had been swamped by the inundation. The lower story was under water. The flood, indeed, was getting closer to the upper rooms. The balconies and windows looked like landings of a pier in an immense lake.

"Seems to me as if we'd struck the place," the barber said.

A warm, resonant voice, that of a woman, vibrant, but with a deep, melodious softness, broke the silence.

"Hey, you in the boat there!… Here, here!"

The voice betrayed no fear. It showed not a trace of emotion.

"Didn't I tell you so I …" the barber exclaimed. "The very place we were looking for. Doña Leonora!… It's I! It's I!"

A rippling laugh came out into gloom.

"Why, it's Cupido! It's Cupido!… I can tell him by his voice. Auntie, auntie! Don't cry any more. Don't be afraid; and stop your praying, please! Here comes the God of Love in a pearl shallop to rescue us!"

Rafael shrank at the sound of that somewhat mocking voice, which seemed to people the darkness with brilliantly colored butterflies.

Now in the luminous square of a window he could make out the haughty profile of a woman among other black forms that were going to and fro past the light inside, in agreeable surprise at the unexpected visit.

The craft drew up to the balcony. The men rose to their feet and were able to reach an iron railing. The barber, from the prow, was looking for something strong where he could make the boat fast.

Leonora was leaning over the balustrade while the light from the torch lit up the golden helmet of her thick, luxuriant hair. She was trying to identify that other man down there who had bashfully sat down again in the stern.

"You're a real friend, Cupido!… Thank you, thank you, ever and ever so much. This is one of the favors we never forget.... But who has come along with you?…"

The barber was already fastening the boat to the iron railing.

"It's don Rafael Brull," he answered slowly. "A gentleman you have met already, I believe. You must thank him for this visit. The boat is his, and it was he who got me out on this adventure."

"Oh, thank you, Señor Brull," said Leonora, greeting the man with the wave of a hand that flashed blue and red from the rings on its fingers. "I must repeat what I said to our friend Cupido. Come right in, and I hope you'll excuse my introducing you through a second-story window."

Rafael had jumped to his feet and was answering her greeting with an awkward bow, clasping the iron railing in order not to fall. Cupido jumped into the house and was followed by the young man, who took pains to make the climb gracefully and sprightly.

He was not sure how well he succeeded. That had been too much excitement for a single night: first the wild trip through the gorges near the city; then those hours of desperate aimless rowing over the winding lanes of the flooded countryside; and now, all at once, a solid floor under his feet, a roof over his head, warmth, and the society of that madly beautiful woman, who seemed to intoxicate him with her perfume, and whose eyes he did not dare meet with his own for fear of fainting from embarrassment.

"Come right in, caballero," she said to him. "You surely need something after this escapade of yours. You are sopping wet, both of you.... Poor boys! Just look at them!… Beppa!… Auntie! But do come in, sir!"

And she fairly pushed Rafael forward with a sort of maternal authoritativeness, much as a kindly woman might take her child in hand after he has done some naughty prank of which she is secretly proud.

The rooms were in disorder. Clothes everywhere and heaps of rustic furniture that contrasted with the other pieces arranged along the walls! The household belongings of the gardener had been brought upstairs as soon as the flood started. An old farmer, his wife—who was beside herself with fear—and several children, who were slinking in the corners, had taken refuge in the upper story with the ladies, as soon as the water began seeping into their humble home.

Rafael entered the dining-room, and there sat doña Pepita, poor old woman, heaped in an armchair, the wrinkles of her features moistened with tears and her two hands clutching a rosary. Cupido was trying vainly to cheer her with jokes about the inundation.

"Look, auntie! This gentleman is the son of your friend, doña Bernarda. He came over here in a boat to help us out. It was very nice of him, wasn't it?"

The old woman seemed quite to have lost her mind from terror. She looked vacantly at the new arrivals, as if they had been there all their lives. At last she seemed to realize what they were saying.

"Why, it's Rafael!" she exclaimed in surprise. "Rafaelito.... And you came to see us in such weather! Suppose you get drowned? What will your mother say?… Lord, how crazy of you! Lord!"

But it was not madness, and even if it were, it was very sweet of him! That, at least, was what Rafael seemed to read in those clear, luminous eyes of the golden sparkles that caressed him with their velvety touch every time he dared to look at them. Leonora was staring at him: studying him in the lamplight, as if trying to understand the difference between the man in front of her and the boy she had met on her walk to the Hermitage.

Doña Pepa's spirits rallied now that men were in the house; and with a supreme effort of will, the old lady decided to leave her armchair for a look at the flood, which had stopped rising, if, indeed, it were not actually receding.

"How much water, oh Lord our God!… How many terrible things we'll learn of tomorrow! This must be a punishment from Heaven … a warning to us to think of our many sins."

Leonora meanwhile was bustling busily about, hurrying the refreshments. Those gentlemen couldn't be left like that—she kept cautioning to her maid and the peasant woman. Just imagine, with their clothes wet through! How tired they must be after that all night struggle! Poor fellows! It was enough just to look at them! And she set biscuits on the table, cakes, a bottle of rum—everything, including a box of Russian cigarettes with gilded tips—to the shocked surprise of the gardener's wife.

"Let them come here, auntie," she said to the old lady. "Don't make them talk any more now.... They need to eat and drink a little, and get warm.... I'm sorry I have so little to offer you. What in the world can I get for them? Let's see! Let's see!"

And while the two men were being forced, by that somewhat despotic attentiveness, to take seats at the table, Leonora and her maid went into the adjoining room, where keys began to rattle and tops of chests to rise and fall.

Rafael, in his deep emotion, could scarcely manage a few drops of rum; but the barber chewed away for all he was worth, downing glass after glass of liquor, and talking on and on through a mouth crammed with food while his face grew redder and redder.

When Leonora reappeared, her maid was following her with a great bundle of clothes in her arms.