The Torrent (Entre Naranjos)

And then again, throwing her beautiful body back in her chair, as if in her mind's eye she could see some old palatial hall festooned with roses, and in it a maze of hoop skirts, powdered wigs, and red heels, whirling in the dance, she would brush the keys with a minuet by Mozart, as subtly fragrant as priceless perfume, as seductive as the smile of a painted princess with beauty-patches and false dimples!

Rafael had not forgotten the first night of their friendship, nor the fingers that had been offered to his lips in that selfsame parlor. Once he was moved to repeat the scene, and bending low over the keys, had tried to kiss Leonora's hand.

The actress started, as if awakening from a dream. Her eyes flashed angrily, though her lips did not lose their smile; and she raised her hand threateningly, with all its fantastic glitter of jewelry, and pretended to strike at him:

"Take care, Rafael; you're a child and I'll treat you as such. You already know that I don't like to be annoyed. I won't send you away this time, but if you do it again, you'll get a good cuffing. Don't forget that when I want my hand kissed I begin by giving it voluntarily. What a nuisance! Such a thing happens only once in a life-time.... But, I understand: no more music for today; it's all over! I'll have to entertain the little boy so's he won't fuss."

And she began to tell him stories of her professional career, which Rafael at once appraised as new progress toward intimacy with the divine beauty.

He looked over her pictures for the various operas in which she had sung; a rich collection of beautiful photographs, with studio signatures in almost every European tongue, some of them in strange alphabets that Rafael could not identify. That pale, mystic Elizabeth of Tannhäuser had been taken in Milan; that ideal, romantic Elsa of Lohengrin, in Munich; here was a wide-eyed, bourgeois Eva from die Meistersinger, photographed in Vienna; there a proud arrogant Brunhilde, with hostile, flashing eyes, that bore the imprint of St. Petersburg. And there were other souvenirs of seasons at Covent Garden, at the San Carlos of Lisbon, the Scala of Milan, and opera houses of New York and Rio de Janeiro.

As Rafael handled the large pasteboard mountings, he felt much like a boy watching strange steamers entering a harbor and scattering the perfumes of distant, mysterious lands all around. Each picture seemed to wrap him in the atmosphere of its country, and from that peaceful salon, murmuring with the breathing of the silent orchard, he seemed to be traveling all over the earth.

The photographs were all of the same characters—heroines of Wagner. Leonora, a fanatic worshipper of the German genius, was ever speaking of him in terms of intimate familiarity, as if she had known him personally, and wished to sing no operas but his. And in her eager desire to compass all the Master's work, she did not hesitate to compromise her reputation for power and vigor by attempting roles of lighter or tenderer vein.

Rafael gazed at the portraits one by one; here she seemed emaciated, wan, as if she had just recovered from an illness; there, she was strong and proud, as if challenging the world with her beauty.

"Oh, Rafael!" she murmured pensively. "Life isn't all gaiety. I have had my stormy times like everybody else. I have lived centuries, it seems, and these strips of cardboard are chapters of my life-story."

And while she surrendered to a dreamy re-living of the past, Rafael would go into ecstasies over a picture of Brunhilde, a beautiful photograph which he had more than once thought of stealing.

That Brunhilde was Leonora herself; the arrogant Valkyrie, the strong, the valiant Amazon, capable of trying to beat him for the slightest unwarranted liberty he took—and of doing it besides. Beneath the helmet of polished steel, with its two wings of white plumes, her blond locks fell, while a savage flash glittered in her green eyes, and her nostrils seemed to palpitate with indomitable fierceness. A cloak fell from her shoulders that were round, muscular, powerful. A steel coat of mail curved outward around her magnificent bust, and her bare arms, one holding the lance, and the other resting on a burnished shield, as shining and luminous as a sheet of crystal, showed vigor and strength under feminine grace of line. There she was in all her goddess-like majesty—the Pallas of a mythology of the North, as beautiful as heroism, as terrible as war. Rafael could understand the mad enthusiasm, the electrified commotion of her audiences as they saw her stepping out among the rocks of painted canvas, setting the boards a-tremble with her lithe footsteps, rudely raising her lance and shield above the white wings of her helmet and shouting the cry of the Valkyries—"Hojotoho!" which, repeated in the green tranquility of that Valencian orchard, seemed to make the lanes of foliage quiver with a tremor of admiring ecstasy.

Across the whole world, and everywhere in triumph, that whimsical, adventuresome, madcap woman, of whose life as an actress so many stories were told, had carried the arrogance of the virgin warrior-maid conceived by the master Wagner. In a bulky book, of uneven irregular pages, where the singer with the minute conscientiousness of a child, had preserved everything the newspapers of the globe had written about her, Rafael found echos of her stormy ovations. Many of the printed clippings were yellow with age, but they could still evoke before his dazzled eyes, visions of theaters packed with elegant, sensuous women, as beautiful as Wotan's daughter in the coat-of-mail; atmospheres hot with light and enthusiasm, a-glitter with sparkling jewels and sparkling eyes; and in the background, with her helmet and her lance, the dominating Valkyrie herself greeted with frantic applause and limitless admiration.

In the collection were newspaper reproductions of the singer's photographs, biographical notices, critical articles relating to the triumphs of the celebrated diva Leonora Brunna—for such was the stage name adopted by Doctor Moreno's daughter—clipping after clipping printed in Castilian or South American Spanish; columns of the clear, close print of English papers; paragraphs on the coarse, thin paper of the French and Italian press; compact masses of Gothic characters, which troubled Rafael's eyes, and unintelligible Russian letters, that, to him, looked like whimsical scrawls of a childish hand. And all in praise of Leonora, one universal tribute to the talent of that woman, who was looked upon so scornfully by the citified peasants of the boy's native town. A divinity, indeed! And Rafael felt a growing hatred and contempt for the gross, uncouth virtue of those who had left her in a social vacuum. Why had she come to Alcira, anyway? What could possibly have led her to abandon a world of triumphs, where she was admired by everyone, for the life, virtually, of a barnyard?

Later she showed him some of her more personal mementoes; jewels of rare beauty, expensive baubles, "testimonials," reminiscent of "evenings of honor," when admirers had surprised her in the green room while outside the audience was applauding wildly, and she, lowering her lance, and surrounded by ushers with huge bouquets, would step forward to the footlights and make her bow of acknowledgment, under a deluge of tinsel and flowers. One medallion bore the portrait of the venerable don Pedro of Brazil, the artist-emperor, who paid tribute to the singer in a greeting written in diamonds. Gem-incrusted frames of gold spoke of enthusiasts who perhaps had begun by desiring the woman to resign themselves in the end to admiration for the artist. Here was a collection of illuminated diplomas from charitable societies thanking her for assistance at benefits. Queen Victoria of England had given her a fan with an autograph dated from a concert at Windsor Castle. From Isabel II came a royal bracelet, as a souvenir of various evenings at the Castilla Palace in Paris. Millionaires, princes, grand-dukes, presidents of Spanish-American republics, had left a whole museum of costly trinkets at her feet. Characteristic of adorers from the United States, where people always temper enthusiasm with usefulness, were a number of portfolios, their bindings much worn by time, containing railroad shares, land titles, stocks in enterprises of varying stability, suggesting the rambles of the American promotor from the prairies of Canada to the pampas of the Argentine.

In the presence of all the trophies that the arrogant Valkyrie had gathered in on her triumphal passage through the world, Rafael felt pride, first of all, at being friends with such a woman; but at the same time a sense of his own insignificance, exaggerating, if anything, the difference that separated them. How in the world had he ever dared make love to a person like Leonora Brunna?

Finally came the most interesting, the most intimate of all her treasures—an album which she allowed him hurriedly to glimpse through, forbidding him, however, even to look at certain of the pages. It was a volume modestly bound in dark leather with silver clasps; but Rafael gazed upon it as on a wonderful fetish, and with all the awe-struck adoration inspired by great names. Kings and emperors were the least among the celebrities who had knelt in homage before the goddess. The overshadowing geniuses of art were there, dedicating a word of affection, a line of verse, a bar of music, to the beautiful songstress. Rafael stared in open-mouthed wonderment at the signatures of the old Verdi and of Boito. Then came the younger masters, of the new Italian school, noisy and triumphant with the clamor of art brought within range of the mob. In gallant phrases the Frenchmen, Massenet and Saint-Saens, paid their respects to the greatest interpreter of the greatest of composers; Rafael could decipher what was in Italian, scenting the sweet perfume of Latin adulation despite the fact that he scarcely knew the language. A sonnet by Illica moved him actually to tears. Other inscriptions were meaningless to him—the lines from Hans Keller, especially, the great orchestral conductor, disciple and confidant of Wagner, the artistic executor, charged with watching over the master's glory—that Hans Keller of whom Leonora was speaking all the time with the fondness of a woman and the admiration of an artist—all of which did not prevent her from adding that he was "a barbarian." Stanzas in German, in Russian and in English, which, as the singer re-read them brought a contented smile to her features, Rafael, to his great despair, could not induce her to translate.

"Those are matters you wouldn't understand. Go on to the next page. I mustn't make you blush."

And that was the only explanation she would give—as though he were a child.

Some Italian verses, written in a tremulous hand and in crooked lines, attracted Rafael's attention. He could half make their meaning out, but Leonora would never let him finish reading them. It was an amorous, desperate lament; a cry of racking passion condemned to disappointment, writhing in isolation like a wild beast in its cage: Luigi Macchia.

"And who is Luigi Macchia?" asked Rafael. "Why such despair?"

"He was a young fellow from Naples," Leonora answered, at last, one afternoon, in a sad voice, and turning her head, as if to conceal the tears that had come to her eyes. "One day they found him under the pine trees of Posilipo, with a bullet through his head. He wanted to die, you see, and he killed himself.... But put all this aside and let's go down to the garden. I need a breath of air."

They sauntered along the avenue that was bordered with rose-bushes, and several minutes went by before either of them spoke. Leonora seemed quite absorbed in her thoughts. Her brows were knitted and her lips pressed tightly together, as if she were suffering the sting of painful recollections.

"Suicide!" she said at last. "Doesn't that seem a silly thing to do, Rafael? Kill yourself for a woman? Just as if we women were obliged to love every man who thinks he's in love with us!… How stupid men are! We have to be their servants, love them willy-nilly. And if we don't, they kill themselves just to spite us."

And she was silent for a time.

"Poor Macchia! He was a good boy, and deserved to be happy. But if I were to surrender to every desperate protestation made to me!… However, he went and did just what he said he would do.... How crazy they get! And the worst of it is, I have found others like him in my travels."

She explained no farther. Rafael gazed at her, but respected her silence, trying in vain to guess the thoughts that were stirring behind her shining eyes, as green and golden as the sea under a noonday sun. What a wealth of romance must be hidden in that woman's past! What tragedies must have been woven into the checkered fabric of her wonderful career!…

So the days went by, and election time came around. Rafael, in passive rebellion against his mother, who rarely spoke a word to him now, had completely neglected the campaign. But on the decisive Sunday he triumphed completely, and Rafael Brull, Deputy from Alcira, spent the night shaking hands, receiving congratulations, listening to serenades, waiting for morning to come that he might run to the Blue House and receive Leonora's ironic good wishes.

"I'm very glad to hear it," the actress said. "Now you'll be leaving very soon and I'll lose sight of you. It was high time really! You know, my dear child, you were beginning to get tiresome with your assiduous worship, that mute, persistent, tenacious adoration of yours. But up in Madrid you'll get over it all. Tut, tut, now … don't say you won't. No need to perjure yourself. I guess I know what young men are like! And you're a young man. The next time we meet, you'll have other things in your head. I'll be a friend, just a friend; and that's what—and all—I want to be."

"But will I find you here when I come back?" Rafael asked, anxiously.

"You want to know more things than anybody I ever knew! How can I say whether I'll be here or not? Nobody in the world was ever sure of holding me. I don't know where I'll be tomorrow myself.... But, no," she continued, gravely, "if you come back by next spring, you'll find me here. I'm thinking of staying surely until then. I want to see the orange-trees in bloom, go back to my early childhood—the only memories of my past that have followed me everywhere. Many a time I have gone to Nice, spending a fortune and crossing half the world to get there—and just to see a handful of puny orange-trees in bloom; now I want to take one great, deep, plunge into the deluge of orange blossoms that inundates these fields every year. It's the one thing that keeps me in Alcira.... I'm sure. So if you come back about that season, you will find me; and we will meet for one last time; for that will be the limit of my endurance. I shall simply have to fly away, however hard poor auntie takes it.... For the present, however, I am quite comfortable. You see I was so tired! I find this solitude a welcome refuge after a stormy voyage. Only something very important indeed could persuade me to leave it at once."

But they saw each other on many another afternoon in the garden, there. It was saturated now with the fragrance of ripe oranges. The vast valley lay blue beneath the winter sun. Oranges, oranges, everywhere, reaching out, it seemed, through the foliage, to the industrious hands that were plucking them from the branches. Carts were creaking all along the roads, trundling heaps of golden fruit over the ruts. The large shipping houses rang again with the voices of girls singing at their work as they selected and wrapped the oranges in paper. Hammers were pounding at the wooden crates, and off toward France and England in great golden waves those daughters of the South rolled—capsules of golden skin, filled with sweet juice—the quintessence of Spanish sunshine.

Leonora, standing on tiptoe under an old tree, with her back toward Rafael, was looking for a particularly choice orange among the dense branches. As she swayed this way and that, the proud, graceful curves of her vigorous slenderness became more beautiful than ever.

"I'm leaving tomorrow," the young man said, dispiritedly.

Leonora turned around. She had found her orange and was peeling it with her long pink nails.

"Tomorrow?" she said, smiling. "Everything comes if you wait long enough!… The best of success to you, señor deputy."

And bringing the fragrant fruit to her lips, she sank her white, glistening teeth into the golden pulp, closing her eyes rapturously, to sense the full warm sweetness of the juice.

Rafael stood there pale and trembling, as if something desperate were in his mind.

"Leonora! Leonora!… Surely you are not going to send me away like this?"

And then suddenly, carried away by a passion so long restrained, so long crushed under timidity and fear, he ran up to her, seized her hands and hungrily sought her lips.

"Oh! What in the world are you up to, Rafael?… How dare you!" she cried. And with one thrust of her powerful arms she threw him back, staggering, against the orange-tree. The young man stood there with lowered head, humiliation and shame written on every line of his face.

"You see, I'm a strong woman," said Leonora, in a voice quivering with anger. "None of your foolish tricks, or you'll be sorry!"

She glared at him for a long time; but then gradually recovered her equanimity, and began to laugh at the pitiable spectacle before her.

"But what a child you are, Rafael!… Is that what you call a friendly good-bye?… How little you know me, silly! You force matters, you do, I see. Well just understand, I'm impregnable, unless I choose to be otherwise. Why, men have died without being able to kiss so much as the tip of my fingers. It's time you were going, Rafael. We'll still be friends, of course.... But in case we are to see each other again, don't forget what I tell you. We are through with such nonsense once and for all. Don't waste your time. I cannot be yours. I'm tired of men; perhaps I hate them. I have known the handsomest, the most elegant, the most famous of them all. I have been almost a queen; queen 'on the left hand side,' as the French say, but so much mistress of the situation that, had I cared to get mixed up in such vulgarity, I could have changed ministries and overturned thrones. Men renowned in Europe for their elegance—and their follies—have grovelled at my feet, and I have treated them worse than I have treated you. The most celebrated women have envied me and hated me—copying my dresses and my poses. And when, tired of all that brilliancy and noise, I said 'Good-bye' and came to this retreat, do you think it was to give myself to a village señorito, though a few hundred country bumpkins think he is a wonder?… Oh, say, Rafael, really...."

And she laughed a cruel, mocking laugh—that cut Rafael to the quick. The young man bowed his head and his chest heaved painfully, as if the tears that could not find issue through his eyes were stifling, choking him. He seemed on the point of utter collapse.

Leonora repented of her cruelty.

She stepped up to the boy until she was almost touching him. Then taking his chin in her two hands, she made him raise his head.

"Oh, I have hurt you, haven't I! What mean things I said to the poor child! Let me see now. Lift that head up! Look me straight in the eye! Say that you forgive me.... That cursed habit I have of never holding my tongue! I have offended you; but please, don't pay any attention to that! I was joking! What a fine way of repaying you for what you did that night!… No; Rafael, you are a very handsome chap indeed … and very distinguished … and you will make a great name for yourself, up in Madrid!… You'll be what they call a 'personage,' and you'll marry—oh my—a very stylish, elegant, society girl! I can see all that.... But, meanwhile, my dear boy, don't depend on me. We are going to be friends, and nothing more than friends, ever! Why, there are tears in your eyes! Well, here. Come … kiss my hand, I will let you … as you did that night—there, like that! I could be yours only if I loved you; but alas! I shall never fall in love with the dashing Rafaelito! I'm an old woman, already, and I've been so lavish with my heart, spent it so freely, I'm afraid I have none left.... Poor, poor little Rafael! I'm so sorry … but, you see, you came so late … so late …!"

PART TWO

I