The Blood of the Arena, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez [mini ebook reader .txt] 📗

meeting his wife, he dined outside many days, going with companions to the Eritaña inn.

Nacional seated himself on a divan, his head bowed and his hat in his hands, not wishing to look at his master's wife. How she had failed! Her eyes were red and encircled by deep, dark hollows. Her cheeks were sallow and the end of her nose shone with a rosy color that told of much rubbing with the handkerchief.

"Sebastián, you must tell me the whole truth. You are good, you are Juan's best friend. Never mind what Mamita said the other day. You know how good she is. She speaks her mind hastily, and then it is all over."

The banderillero assented with a nod while awaiting her question. What did the Señora Carmen wish to know?

"Tell me what happened at La Rincona', what you saw, and what you think."

Ah! good Nacional! With what noble pride he held his head high, happy to be able to do good and to comfort the forlorn soul. See? He had seen nothing wrong!

"I swear it by my father, I swear it—by my ideas."

And without fear he took his oath on the most holy testimony of his ideas, for in reality he had seen nothing and not seeing it, he logically thought, in the pride of his perspicacity and wisdom, that nothing wrong could have happened.

"I think they are no more than friends—now—if there has been anything between them before—I don't know. The people say—they talk—they invent so many lies! Pay no attention, Seña' Carmen. To be happy and to be alive, that is reality!"

She insisted again. But what had happened at the hacienda? The hacienda was her home, and it angered her to see, in addition to infidelity, something that seemed a sacrilege, a direct insult to her person.

"Do you think I am a fool, Sebastián? I have seen everything since he first began to notice that lady, or whatever she may be; I even knew Juan's thoughts. The day he dedicated a bull to her and brought home that diamond ring I guessed what was between the two and I felt like grabbing the ring and stamping on it. From that time I have known everything, everything! There are always people who take it upon themselves to carry tales because they can hurt one. And besides, they haven't been cautious, they have gone everywhere together, just like gypsies that travel from fair to fair. When I was at the plantation I heard about all that Juan was doing and afterward at Sanlúcar, too."

Nacional thought it necessary to interrupt, seeing that Carmen was moved by these memories and was beginning to cry.

"And do you believe lies, child? Don't you see they are the inventions of people that want to hurt him? Envy, nothing more."

"No; I know Juan. Do you think this is the first one? He is what he is. And he can't be different. Cursed trade, that seems to turn men mad! After we had been married only two years he had a love affair with a girl from the market, a butcher girl. What I suffered when I found it out! But I never said a word. He still thinks I don't know it. After that, how many he has had! Girls that dance on the stage in cafés, women of the street, and even lost creatures that live in public houses. I don't know how many there have been—dozens! And I was silent, because I wished to keep peace in my home. But this woman he has now is not like the others. Juan is crazy for her; he is foolish; I know he has done thousands of humiliating things so that she, recollecting that she is a lady of high birth, will not throw him out into the street in sudden shame from having relations with a bull-fighter. She has gone now. Didn't you know it? I found out she had gone because she is bored in Seville. She left without saying good-bye to Juan, and when he went to see her the other day, he found the door closed. And there he is, sad as a sick horse; he goes around among his friends with a funereal face and drinks to cheer himself up; and when he comes home he acts as if he had had a beating. No; he can't forget that woman. The señor was proud of having a woman of that class care for him and his pride is hurt at being left. Ah, how disgusted I am with him! He is no longer my husband. He seems to me a different person. We hardly ever speak to one another—just as if we were strangers, except when quarrelling. I am alone upstairs and he sleeps downstairs in a room off the courtyard. We shall never be united again, I swear it! Long ago I could overlook everything; they were bad habits belonging to the profession; the bull-fighters' mania. They believe themselves irresistible to women—but now I don't want to see him any more; he has become repugnant to me."

She spoke with energy, her eyes shining with the glow of hatred.

"Ah, that woman! How she has changed him! He is another man! He only cares to go with rich young fellows, and now the people of our ward and all the poor in Seville who were his friends, and helped him in the beginning, complain of him and some fine day they will raise a riot in the plaza because he is ungrateful. Money comes in here by the basketful, and it isn't easy to count it. Not even he himself ever knows what he has, but I see it all. He gambles a great deal to make his new friends like him, he loses much; the money comes in one door and goes out the other. I say nothing to him. It is he that earns it. But he has had to ask a loan from Don José for things needed at the hacienda and some olive orchards he bought this year to add to the property were purchased with other people's money. Nearly everything he earns during the coming season will go to pay debts.

"And if he should have an accident, and have to retire as others do!

"He has even wanted to change me, just as he is changed. The señor shows, when he comes home after visiting his Doña Sol, or Doña Devil, that his mamita and I seem to him very out of date in our shawls and our loose gowns such as are worn by all the daughters of the land. He it is who has made me wear those hats brought from Madrid in which I look so hideous, just like one of those monkeys that dance to the hand-organs. The mantilla is so rich! And he has bought that hell-wagon, that automobile, that I am always afraid to ride in and which smells to heaven. If we would let him he would even put a hat with rooster's tails on poor Mamita. He is a vain fellow who thinks only of that other woman and wants to make us like her so that he won't be ashamed of us."

The banderillero broke forth in protests. Not so! Juan was good-hearted and he did all this because he loved his family and wanted them to have luxuries.

"What you say about Juaniyo may be true, Seña' Carmen, but he must be forgiven some things. Come! How many there are who die with envy at sight of you! Is it nothing to be the wife of the bravest of all the bull-fighters, with handfuls of money and a marvel of a house, of which you are absolute mistress?—for the master gives you charge of everything!"

Carmen's eyes grew moist and she raised her handkerchief to her eyes.

"I would rather be a shoe-maker's wife! How often I have thought it! If only Juan had followed his trade instead of catching this bull-fighting mania! I would be happier in a poor shawl going to carry him his dinner in the portal where he worked as did his father. There wouldn't be any smart girls to take him away from me; he would be mine; we might know want, but on Sundays, dressed in our best, we would go to dine at an inn. Besides, the agonies of fear those accursed bulls cause me! This is not living. Plenty of money, plenty! But believe me, Sebastián, it is like poison to me, and the more that comes into the house the more my blood chills. What are hats and all this luxury to me? People think I am happy and they envy me, while my eyes follow the poor women that have less, but who carry their babies in their arms and when they are in trouble forget it in looking into the child's eyes and laughing with it. Ah, children! I know how great is my misfortune. If only we had children! If Juan could see a child in the house that was his own, all his own, something nearer than his little nephews!"

Carmen poured forth a continuous flow of tears that escaped through the folds of her handkerchief and bathed her reddened cheeks. It was the sorrow of the childless woman, ever envying the happy fate of mothers; the desperation of the wife who, on seeing her husband growing distant to her, pretends to think it due to divers causes, but in the depths of her soul attributes the misfortune to her barrenness. Ah! for a son to unite them! And Carmen, convinced by the passing years of the futility of this desire, was in despair and gazed enviously at her silent listener, to whom Nature had prodigally given that for which she longed in vain.

The banderillero departed from this interview with his head bent low and went in search of the maestro, meeting him at the door of the Forty-five.

"Juan, I have seen thy wife. The affair grows worse and worse. Try to make up with her, to straighten things out."

"Damn it! May sickness end her, thee, and me! This is not living. God permit that Sunday a bull may catch me and so it will all be ended! What is life worth!"

He was partially drunk. He was desperate over the sullen frown he met in his house and still more (though he confessed it to none), over the flight of Doña Sol without leaving a word for him, not even a paper with four lines of farewell. They had put him out of the door; had treated him worse than if he had been a servant. He did not even know where the woman was. The Marquis had interested himself but little in his niece's journey. The maddest girl! She had not told him, either, about her going, but not on that account would he think her lost in the world. She would soon give signs of existence from some strange country where her caprices had carried her.

Gallardo did not conceal his desperation in his own house. At the silence of his wife, who kept her eyes lowered, or looked at him frowning and refusing to converse, the matador burst forth into deadly curses.

"Damn my fate! I hope a Miura will hook me Sunday and shake me like a bell, and that they will bring me home on a stretcher!"

"Don't say that, malaje!" wailed Señora Angustias. "Don't tempt God. See if that don't bring bad luck."

But the brother-in-law intervened with his sententious air, taking advantage of the opportunity to flatter the swordsman.

"Never mind, Mamita. There isn't a bull alive that can touch him!"

Sunday was the last bull-fight of the year in which Gallardo was to work. He spent the morning without the vague fears and superstitious preoccupations of other occasions. He dressed himself joyfully, with a nervous excitement that seemed to augment the vigor of his arms and legs. What joy that