To an Angel · 6

Would you believe—added Father Téllez—that I could not rid him of his obstinate notion of honour? He repented... but two minutes later he was back to insisting that he was a gentleman, and his conduct, far from guilty, exemplary... On this ground he died almost impenitent...”

“He must have been mad—we said, in order to comfort the priest, who had remained deeply dejected upon concluding his tale.”

First Love

What age could I have been at the time? Eleven or twelve? More likely thirteen, for before then it is too early to fall in love so truly; but I dare not assert anything, considering that in southern lands the heart ripens very early, assuming this organ to be to blame for such disorders.

If I do not remember well the when, at least I can say with complete accuracy how my passion began to reveal itself. I liked very much—after my aunt had departed for church to perform her evening devotions—to slip into her bedroom and rummage through the drawers of the chest, which she kept in admirable order. Those drawers were a museum to me: I always stumbled in them upon something rare and old, which exhaled an archaic and discreet fragrance, the scent of the sandalwood fans that lay about there perfuming the linen. Pincushions of faded satin; netted mittens, carefully folded between tissue paper; holy cards of saints; sewing implements; a reticule of blue velvet embroidered with purl; an amber and silver rosary, appeared one by one in the corners: I inspected them curiously and returned them to their place. But one day—I remember it just as if it were today—in the corner of the top drawer and through some collars of old lace, I saw a golden object shining... I thrust in my hands, crumpled the lace trimming without meaning to, and brought out a portrait, a miniature on ivory, measuring about three inches in height, in a gold frame.

I remained as if spellbound gazing upon it. A ray of sun filtered through the windowpane and struck the seductive image, which seemed to wish to detach itself from the dark background and come toward me. It was a most beautiful creature, such as I had never seen except in my adolescent dreams, when the first tremors of puberty caused me, as dusk fell, vague sadness and indefinable longings. The lady of the portrait might be bordering on twenty-odd; she was no candid virgin, no half-opened bud, but a woman in whom already shone all the splendour of beauty. She had an oval face, though not very elongated; full, half-parted, smiling lips; languidly half-closed eyes, and a dimple on her chin, which seemed indented by the fingertip of playful Cupid. Her coiffure was strange and graceful: a compact cluster like a pine-cone of curls beside her temples and a basket of braids on the crown of her head. This antique coiffure, gathered up at the nape, revealed all the soft roundness of her fresh throat, where the dimple of the chin was repeated more delicate and gentle. As for her dress... I cannot decide whether our grandmothers were naturally less modest than our wives, or whether the confessors of yesteryear were broader-minded than those of today; and I incline toward the latter, for some sixty years ago women prized themselves on being Christian and devout, and would not disobey their spiritual director in a matter so grave and patent. What is indisputable is that if nowadays any lady were to appear in the dress of the lady of the portrait, she would provoke a riot; for from the waist (which began almost beneath the armpits) only light folds of diaphanous gauze veiled her, revealing rather than covering two snowy splendours, between which snaked a string of pearls, not without resting first upon the smooth surface of the satin décolletage. With equal shamelessness her rounded arms were displayed, worthy of Juno, terminating in sculptural hands... In saying hands I am not exact, because strictly speaking only one hand was visible, and that one clasped a rich handkerchief.

Even today I am astonished at the sudden effect that the contemplation of that miniature produced in me, and at how I stood entranced, my breath suspended, devouring the portrait with my eyes. I had already seen here and there pictures representing beautiful women; frequently, in illustrated journals, in the mythological engravings of the dining-room, in the shop windows, it happened that a gallant line, a harmonious and elegant contour, captivated my precociously artistic gaze; but the miniature found in my aunt’s drawer, apart from its great comeliness, seemed to me as though animated by a subtle breath of life; one could see that it was no painter’s fancy, but the likeness of a real, actual person, of flesh and blood. The rich and juicy tone of the impasto revealed beneath the pearly skin the warm blood; the lips parted to display the enamel of the teeth; and, completing the illusion, around the frame ran a border of natural hair, chestnut, wavy, and silky, which had grown upon the temples of the original. In short: that, more than a copy, was the reflection of a living person, from whom only a wall of glass separated me... I placed my hand upon it, warmed it with my breath, and it occurred to me that the warmth of the mysterious divinity communicated itself to my lips and circulated through my veins. Being thus engaged, I heard footsteps in the corridor. It was my aunt returning from her prayers. I heard her asthmatic cough and the dragging of her gouty feet. I had barely time to replace the miniature in the drawer, shut it, and draw near the window, adopting an indifferent and nowise suspicious posture.

My aunt entered blowing her nose noisily, for the cold of the church had aggravated her already chronic catarrh. On seeing me her rheumy little eyes brightened, and, giving me a friendly little slap with her dry palm, she asked me if I had been turning out her drawers, according to custom.

Then, smiling with roguishness:

“Wait, wait—she added—I am going to give you something that will make you lick your fingers.”

And she took from her vast pocket a paper cornet, and from the cornet three or four gum-drops stuck together, as if squashed, which filled me with disgust.

My aunt’s appearance did not invite one to open one’s mouth and swallow the sweetmeat: great age, missing teeth, eyes moist beyond measure, a hint of moustache or bristles above her sunken mouth, a parting three fingers wide, dirty grey hairs fluttering over her yellow temples, a flabby, livid neck like the wattle of a turkey when in good humour... In short, I was not going to take the sweets, not I! A feeling of indignation, a manly protest arose within me, and I declared with energy:

“I don’t want any, I don’t want any.”

“You don’t want any? A great miracle! You who have a sweeter tooth than the cat!”

“I am no longer a child—I exclaimed, drawing myself up, standing on the tips of my toes—and I do not want sweets.”

My aunt looked at me with an expression between kindly and ironical, and at last, yielding to the amusement I afforded her, burst into laughter, whereby the terrifying anatomy of her jaws was distorted and laid bare. She laughed with such good will that chin and nose kissed, concealing her lips, and two wrinkles, or rather two deep furrows, and more than a dozen creases showed upon cheeks and eyelids; at the same time, her head and belly rocked with the jerks of her laughter, until at last a fit of coughing came to interrupt her guffaws, and between laughing and coughing, involuntarily, the old woman sprayed my face with a shower of saliva... Humiliated and filled with repugnance, I fled headlong and did not stop until I reached my mother’s room, where I washed with soap and water, and gave myself up to thinking of the lady of the portrait.

And from that moment and hour I could no longer separate my thoughts from her. For my aunt to go out and for me to slip into her room, open the drawer, take out the miniature and lose myself in contemplating it, was all one. By dint of gazing at it, I fancied that her half-closed eyes, through the voluptuous half-light of her eyelashes, fixed themselves upon mine, and that her white bosom breathed anxiously. I even felt ashamed to kiss it, imagining that she would take offence at my daring, and I only pressed it against my heart, or laid my cheek against it. All my actions and thoughts referred to the lady; I showed toward her strange refinements and trivial delicacies. Before entering my aunt’s room and opening the coveted drawer, I washed, combed my hair, tidied myself, as I saw afterwards is customary for keeping amorous appointments.

It often happened that I met in the street other boys of my age, already well provided with their bit of a sweetheart, who proudly showed me little notes, portraits, and flowers, asking me if I too would not choose my girl to correspond with. An inexplicable feeling of modesty tied my tongue, and I answered them only with an enigmatic and proud smile. When they asked my opinion concerning the beauty of their little damsels, I shrugged my shoulders and disdainfully described them as ugly and dowdy. It happened one Sunday that I went to play at the house of some little cousins of mine, very charming in truth, the eldest not yet fifteen. We were very busily looking at a stereoscope, when suddenly one of the girls, the youngest, twelve springs at most, slyly took my hand, and deeply moved, red as a glowing ember, whispered in my ear:

“Take this.”

At the same time I felt in the palm of my hand something soft and cool, and I saw that it was a rosebud, with its green foliage. The child drew back smiling and casting a sideways glance at me; but I, with a puritanism worthy of chaste Joseph, shouted in my turn:

“Take that!”

And I flung the bud right in her face, a slight that kept her all afternoon tearful and sulky with me, and which even to this day, now that she is married and has three children, she has probably not forgiven me.

Finding the two or three hours my aunt spent between morning and evening at church too short for admiring the magical portrait, I resolved at last to keep the miniature in my pocket, and went about all day hiding from people just as if I had committed a crime. I fancied that the portrait, from the depths of its cloth prison, saw all my actions, and I went to the ridiculous extreme that if I wished to scratch a flea-bite, tie a sock, or do any other thing less in keeping with the idealism of my pure love, I first took out the miniature, deposited it in a safe place, and then deemed myself free to do whatever suited me best. In short, from the moment I consummated the theft, I could not contain myself; at night I hid it beneath my pillow and fell asleep in an attitude of defending it; the portrait faced the wall, I faced outward, and I woke a thousand times in fear that someone was coming to snatch my treasure from me. At last I took it from beneath the pillow and slipped it between my shirt and my skin, over my left breast, where the next day the chiselled ornaments of the frame could be seen imprinted.

The contact with the dear miniature brought me delicious dreams. The lady of the portrait, not in effigy, but in her natural size and proportions, living, graceful, affable, comely, came toward me to conduct me to her palace in a carriage of soft cushions. With gentle authority she made me sit at her feet upon a cushion, and passed her shapely hand over my head, caressing my forehead, my eyes, and my ruffled hair. I read to her from a great missal, or played the lute, and she deigned to smile, thanking me for the pleasure my songs and readings afforded her. In short, romantic reminiscences were seething in my brain, and now I was a page, now a troubadour.

With all these fancies, the fact is that I began to grow remarkably thin, and my parents and my aunt observed it with great anxiety.

“At that difficult and critical age of development, everything is alarming—said my father, who was wont to read medical books and studied with apprehension my dark rings, my lacklustre eyes, my pinched and pale mouth, and above all, the complete lack of appetite that had taken possession of me.”

“Play, child; eat, child—they were accustomed to say to me.”

And I would answer them dejectedly:

“I have no wish to.”

They began to devise distractions for me; they offered to take me to the theatre; they suspended my studies, and gave me foaming, freshly milked milk to drink. Afterwards they poured cold showers over the nape of my neck and my back, to fortify my nerves; and I noticed that my father, at table or in the morning when I went to his room to bid him good day, looked at me fixedly for a while and sometimes ran his hands down my spine, feeling and testing my vertebrae. I hypocritically cast down my eyes, resolved to die rather than confess my offence. No sooner was I free from the affectionate scrutiny of the family than I was with my lady of the portrait. At last, the better to draw near her, I decided to remove the cold glass: I hesitated on the point of putting it into practice; in the end love proved stronger than the vague dread that such profanation inspired in me, and with great dexterity I managed to wrench off the glass and expose the ivory plate.

Upon pressing my lips to the painting and perceiving the faint fragrance of the border of hair, it seemed to me with greater evidence that it was a living person my trembling hands clasped. A swoon came over me, and I remained upon the sofa as though deprived of sense, clutching the miniature.

When I recovered consciousness I saw my father, my mother, my aunt, all leaning over me with the utmost concern; I read in their faces astonishment and alarm; my father was feeling my pulse, shaking his head and murmuring:

“This pulse seems like a fine thread, a thing that is slipping away.”

My aunt, with her hooked fingers, was struggling to take the portrait from me, and I mechanically hid it and held it tighter.

—Come, boy... let go, you are ruining it!—she exclaimed—. Don’t you see you are rubbing it out? I am not scolding you, child... I will show it to you as often as you like; but don’t spoil it; let go, you are hurting it.

“Leave it to him—pleaded my mother—the child is ill.”

—That’s the last straw!—answered the spinster—. Leave it! And who can make another like that... or who will bring me back to those times? Nowadays nobody paints miniatures... that is over... and I too am over, and am not what appears there!

My eyes dilated with horror; my hands loosed the painting. I know not how I was able to articulate:

“You... the portrait... it is you...”

“Don’t I seem pretty enough to you, child? Bah! Three-and-twenty years are handsomer than... than... than I don’t know how many, for I keep no count; nobody can steal them from me!”

My head drooped, and perhaps I fainted again; the truth is that my father carried me in his arms to bed, and made me swallow a few spoonfuls of port.

I convalesced quickly and never wished to enter my aunt’s room again.

Inspiration

A fatal season the illustrious Faust, the great poet, was passing through. By a series of circumstances linked with incredible persistence, everything was going wrong for him, everything failed, stunted, as though around him the seeds were withering and the earth becoming barren. Without being old in body, his soul was rapidly growing old, its yellowish illusions shedding their leaves in a sad autumn. What overwhelmed him was not grief, but atony of his ardent sensibility and fertile imagination.

He had just broken off relations with a woman he did not love; the affair had begun with a sentimental comedy, and dragged on amid an eternity of tedium, the insufferable weariness of the actor playing an antipathetic part, which he was already beginning to forget from sheer familiarity, in a drama devoid of interest and literature. And yet, when the woman regarded with such indifference brazenly supplanted him and made him the target of bitter gibes repeated in the drawing-rooms, Faust felt one of those dry, irritating bitternesses that ulcerate the soul, and remained, without wishing to confess it to himself, dissatisfied with himself, lowered in his own eyes, saturated with a vulgar and prosaic scepticism, steeped in the ungrateful conviction that his mind would never again create a work of art, nor his heart distil emotion.