En Busca de Cuadros

Without brushes, without palette, without paper, without pencil, Ricardo—an incorrigible lyric poet, fleeing from the agitations and turbulences, the machinery and the bales, the monotonous rumble of the trams and the clatter of horses whose hooves rattled like seashells upon cobblestones; from the throngs of merchants, the cries of newspaper hawkers, and the ceaseless bustle and endless ferment of this seaport—in search of impressions and tableaux climbed up Cerro Alegre, which, gallant as a great flowering rock, displays its green flanks and its knolls crowned with cheerful houses terraced in the heights, girdled with gardens, waving curtains of creepers, birdcages, flowerpots, bright railings, and blond children with angelic faces.

Below lay the rooftops of the Valparaíso that strikes bargains, that hurries on foot like a gale, that populates the warehouses and invades the banks, dressed of a morning in cream or leaden plaid suits with felt hats, and by night buzzing in Calle del Cabo with lustrous top hats, overcoats on arm, and yellow gloves, gazing by the light spilling from shop windows at the lovely faces of the passing women.

Further off lay the sea: steely, misty, the ships clustered together, the horizon blue and distant. Above, amidst opacities, the sun. Where the inveterate dreamer stood, nearly at the very summit of the hill, the tremors below could barely be perceived. He strolled along the Camino de Cintura, musing on idylls with all the august insolence of a poet who might be a millionaire.

There was fresh air there for his lungs, houses perched upon ridges like nests in the wind, where he could well indulge himself in placing enamored couples; and he had, besides, the immense azure expanse, of which—he knew full well—those who fashion psalms and hymns may dispose as their whim directs.

Suddenly he heard: “Mary! Mary!” And he, who was hunting for impressions and in search of tableaux, turned his gaze.

Nearby lay a lovely garden, with more roses than azaleas and more violets than roses. A beautiful, small garden with ornamental urns, but without statues; with a white fountain basin, but without jets, hard by a little cottage fashioned as if for a sweet, happy fairy tale.

In the basin a swan splashed, churning the water, fluttering wings of snowy whiteness, arching its neck in the shape of a lyre’s arm or an amphora’s handle, and moving its wet beak, of such luster as though it had been carved from rosy agate.

At the cottage door, as though stepped out of a novel by Dickens, stood one of those English old women—singular, solitary, classic—with ribboned bonnet, spectacles upon her nose, stooped frame, and wrinkled cheeks, yet with the hue of a ripe apple and rich health. Over her dark skirt hung her apron.

She was calling:

“Mary!”

The poet saw a young maiden arrive from a corner of the garden: beautiful, triumphant, smiling; and he had time only to reflect that golden tresses are adorable when they float upon marble napes, and that there are faces well worth a dawn.

Then all was delightful. Those fifteen years amidst the roses—fifteen years proclaimed by a girl’s serene eyes, a barely budding bosom, a springtime freshness, and an ankle-length skirt revealing the tantalizing beginning of flesh-colored stockings—; those trembling rosebushes swaying their green arches; those peach trees with merry blossoms where wandering butterflies dusted with gold and dragonflies with crystalline, iridescent wings paused in their flight; that swan in the wide basin, its alabaster plumage ruffled, plunging voluptuously amidst foam and bubbles into the clear water; the clean, painted, tranquil cottage from which emerged as it were a wave of happiness; and at the door the old dame, a winter set in the midst of all that life, beside Mary, a virginity in bloom.

Ricardo, a lyric poet hunting for tableaux, stood there with the relish of a gourmet savoring exquisite dainties.

And the old woman and the girl:

“What bringest thou?”

“Flowers.”

Mary displayed her lap filled as if with shattered rainbows, which she stirred with one of her graceful nymph’s hands, while her pretty, purple mouth smiled, and her wide-open, round eyes revealed a lapis-lazuli hue and a radiant moisture. The poet walked on.