To an Angel · 17

Meanwhile the establishment prospered, and Riopardo, dark, clean-shaven, sleek, was acquiring that composure which accompanies prosperity. Business went like silk, and he hoped to die a capitalist, like other merchants of the same town who had had beginnings even more humble... For the present it was well to work, taking advantage of the vigour of his thirty years and iron health. By day, from six in the morning, at his post, having everything cleaned and tidied, weighing, serving, taking money; by night, verifying ledgers, copying invoices, answering letters... and thus without rest or any interval save a short journey to Barcelona and Madrid.

From one of these Riopardo returned married; his wife, a pretty girl, daughter of a perfumer, appeared in the shop from the first day, assisting her husband and the shopman at the counter. María’s youthful countenance and refined Castilian speech were another attraction for the customers. Without being active or industrious like her husband, María was coaxing and solicitous, and it was a joy to see her, tightly laced in her corset, with her hair dressed high, slicing with her white little hand and slender fingers a cut of Gruyère or a series of slices of sausage, thin as wafers, weighing them neatly, and wrapping them in tissue paper tied with blue ribbon. The shop smiled, enlivened by the rustle of light skirts, and there was no one like María to appease a discontented customer, to flatter an exacting one, to give a picture card to a child, or slip a handful of dates into the apron of a grumbling cook...

María’s example, her charm, her obliging ways had influenced the shopman Germán. While he was alone with Riopardo, Germán was sullen, indifferent, and clumsy; he did not change his clothes, he did not shave. María set his room in order—for Germán lived with his employers on the principal floor—provided him with a good washstand, with towels, mended his linen, and bought him collars and cuffs, whereby the shopman brought to light his dapper figure and blond curls clustering gracefully about his temples, and maidservants and ladies alike bought with better will in the shop, for after all people like to receive foodstuffs from clean, young, and good-looking folk... «One also eats with one’s eyes», they were wont to say.

One afternoon, when night was almost fallen, Riopardo, returning from settling urgent business at the custom-house, preferred to enter his house by the back door, which opened upon the Marina, thus saving ten minutes of useless street-walking, for, as a man of action, he was sparing of time. He had the latchkey in his pocket: he unlocked the door, crossed a passage, and pushed the door of the storeroom, which yielded without creaking. The storeroom, crammed with cans of petroleum, casks of spirits and oil, and sacks of rice and flour, was dark, and far at the further end Riopardo thought he perceived a smothered, soft whispering. He halted, sheltered by a large hogshead, and looked. At first one sees nothing, coming from outside, when the light is dim; but after three minutes the sight grows accustomed, and something is discerned. Riopardo succeeded in distinguishing two persons. Suddenly one of them, Germán, said aloud: «Someone is in the shop.» And their manner of separating, abrupt, startled, was even more unmistakable than the proximity of the two figures...

Riopardo stepped back: he went out the way he had entered, and without caring any longer to save time, entered his house through the shop. It was closed at the usual hour; the three dined together—husband, wife, and shopman—and the latter two retired peacefully to their respective bedrooms. Riopardo went down again: it was the time to review accounts and handle the books. He carried his dark lantern which served him to inspect the storeroom in case of fire; and once inside the vast enclosure, he began by barring the door leading to the passage and testing the bolts of the one communicating with the shop.

Afterwards he applied himself to a strange task: he opened a hundred cans of petroleum and tipped them so that the oil ran over the floor; thereupon, dipping a large broom into the pools that formed, he varnished thoroughly a certain spot on the ceiling, sprinkling it continually with vigorous sweeps. From a corner he brought armfuls of straw, paper, and shavings—refuse from the packing of the bottles—and heaped them up to form a pyramid, which with the aid of a ladder reached the beams of the ceiling, at the very point where he had smeared them with petroleum. This done, he continued opening cans and turned the cock of a huge barrel of alcohol. The labour had been long; Riopardo felt an icy sweat starting from his brow. He rested an instant and looked at his watch: it was a quarter to one. Then he took off his shoes, opened the outer door leaving it ajar, stole furtively up the stairs, and stopped only at his bedchamber. María was sleeping, or pretending to sleep, peacefully. The chamber had no window. Riopardo, with marvellous silence, placed before the glass door chairs, armchairs, clothes, a chest, whatever objects he could move without making noise.

He withdrew, and on going out bolted and locked from the outside the door of the cabinet that communicated with the bedroom. He descended once more to the shop, entered the storeroom, struck a match, lighted a short fuse, and applied it to the floor flooded with mineral oil. The sudden flare that arose singed his eyelashes and hair. He had barely time to flee into the shop. The storeroom would not be three minutes in becoming an enormous furnace.

The husband, with composure, put on his shoes, wiped his hands, and went upstairs with a heavy tread. He knocked at the door of Germán’s bedroom, who came out half naked, terrified. «I think there is a fire... It smells of smoke... Come down... No, before calling for help we must make sure!» Germán rushed down in nothing but a pair of hastily donned trousers and slippers. Scarcely awake yet from the first sleep of twenty years, he hardly understood what was happening. Riopardo preceded him with the indispensable lantern.

Shop and hallway were already full of an acrid, suffocating smoke. «Go in, look and see where it is...» The shopman hesitated, blinded and bewildered; Riopardo pushed him, hurled him, without any further disguise, into the furnace, and still had strength to draw the bolts and flee, escaping to the hallway and the street. In it he breathed with delight, satisfying himself that the watchman was not about, nor was anyone passing, and the same would probably happen during the necessary quarter of an hour...

Nevertheless, at the end of ten minutes the smoke was such that, fearing to see windows open and hear cries for help, Riopardo himself shouted. When the first assistance arrived, the house, especially the ground floor and principal storey, formed nothing but a bonfire. Care was taken to isolate the neighbouring houses and rescue with ladders the tenants of the second and third floors. Fatality—people observed—willed that the fire should begin in that part of the storeroom corresponding to the bedroom of Riopardo’s wife, who, suffocated by the smoke, could not even rise to call for help. She was found charred, as was the shopman, presumed guilty of reckless imprudence through smoking in the storeroom.

The stock of the establishment not being insured, no suspicion fell upon the owner, but rather great pity. Completely ruined, there was no lack of persons who, esteeming his mercantile qualities and his industry, advanced him money to open another warehouse; but Riopardo says sadly to his former and faithful customers:

“I have no illusions left... A wife and a shopman like those I lost, I shall never find again!”

Gonzalo’s Religion

“And how is your husband?—Rosalía asked her childhood friend Beatriz Córdoba, taking advantage of the moment of intimacy and confidence created between two persons by the common atmosphere, warm with breath and saturated with light perfumes, of a well-closed, well-padded brougham rolling through the deserted avenues of the Retiro at eleven o’clock on a splendid, freezing December morning.”

“My husband?—Beatriz answered, feigning surprise, for she believed her complete happiness ought to be read upon her face.—My husband? Do you not see me? Another such man does not exist!... For no one’s lot would I exchange mine...”

Rosalía made a little grimace, the instinctively malicious pout with which the best of friends greet the display of another’s bliss, and murmured impatiently:

“Look, I am not asking about intimate matters. I am not so indiscreet... I was referring to religious ideas... Don’t you remember?... Gonzalo was... well... of the bitter shell, you know!”

Beatriz kept silence for a few moments; and then, as though resolving upon complete disclosures, of those we make more to hear ourselves than for a friend to listen, she turned toward her companion, and raising her veil to the level of her nose to speak freely, spoke rapidly:

“Gonzalo’s lack of religion! And what if I told you that on account of it we were within an ace of never marrying? The plain truth. You know that Gonzalo is my cousin, and my family and his always dreamed of making the match, until Gonzalo’s bad reputation in religious matters completely wrecked the plan. You knew poor mama well, and you will not wonder if I tell you that she went so far as to shut the door against Gonzalo tight and fast; he came ten times at least, and we had always gone out! «I acknowledge», mama used to say, «that my nephew is very agreeable, that he has received a choice education, that he possesses more than average learning; I cannot deny his handsome figure, nor his clear intelligence, nor his gentlemanly ways; he has my blood, he does not lack fortune... but it horrifies me to think that he believes in nothing, and does not even take the trouble to conceal it. It is bad to suffer disorders of the soul, and worse not even to hide them.» On hearing these things, I came to Gonzalo’s defence; it was impossible for me to cease loving him... a little... that is, a great deal! Frankly, I went on loving him, unable to forget the times when I considered him my betrothed. Mama noticed where her daughter was weak, and, to disabuse me, arranged my marriage with Leoncio Díaz Saravia, who is now Under-Secretary of the Interior; he was a worthy youth, and a brilliant future lay before him; but even so, I was not enthusiastic: at most I resigned myself, lukewarmly, to the marriage. We are so strange! The only thing that gave me a certain peace of mind, what gave me strength when I felt upon me the overwhelming weight of involuntary sadness, was the rumour that Gonzalo would have no love affairs, that he had resolved never to marry. «He does that for me, for my memory», I thought; and I took comfort in thinking it.”

“Whoever cannot find comfort...—Rosalía murmured smiling, while smoothing with repeated strokes the soft, dense fur of her muff.”

“One day... no, one night, for we were at the theatre when we learned of it... the news spread that Gonzalo, in a café, had set about slapping a fellow, and that a duel had been arranged; a serious encounter, on terms no longer in vogue, for one to remain on the field... Cause of the conflict? Unanimous report: «A woman.» Gonzalo himself confessed it, according to the well-informed: it concerned a lady insulted in Gonzalo’s presence, whose defence he had undertaken by striking the vile offender’s face... What I felt! In what a state I returned home! What a night I passed, dear Rosalía! It cannot be described... Apart from the terror that Gonzalo might be killed, another thing fired my blood and strained my nerves...”

“Jealousy?—Rosalía asked with joyful malice.”

“Who could doubt it? Just imagine that all my illusions were shattered. That Gonzalo should not love me, well and good, and that was much to accept; but that he should love another so much, even to slapping people, even to risking his life... I had been dreaming, evidently... dreaming like a fool! My betrothed of early years, my constant secret longing, cared nothing for me; for another he was going to cross swords, for another whom he secretly preferred... Who was that woman? What syllables composed her name and surname? Unmarried? Married? Married for certain, since such mystery enveloped her that Gonzalo refused to name her... And I tossed in bed, and the pillow was drenched with hot tears... Then my resignation seemed stupid to me, my obedience inconceivable, absurd, my marriage absurd; and no sooner did dawn break than I went straight to my mother’s bedroom, and threw my arms around her in such a state of affliction and distress that the poor woman (you remember how extreme she was in loving me) said to me: «Child, be calm... I will go and see what has happened to that madcap nephew of mine... If he is wounded, I promise to nurse him as his own mother would nurse him...»”

Wounded he was in truth, but not seriously; his adversary indeed received a fine thrust, which, had it not glanced off a rib...! As soon as Gonzalo was able to go out—and it was very soon—he came in haste to thank mama. Ah, Rosalía! What an impression! I noticed that he looked at me... well... as at other times... and at the first few words he slipped in, both of us being in the embrasure of a window looking onto the garden... I could not help it... I let out the difficult question...

“That woman for whom you fought...?”

He turned scarlet, which seemed to me an evil omen, and answered very confused and half laughing:

“A woman!... Yes, a woman was the cause!...”

I made a movement to draw away, to flee (I was furious, I could have struck him), and then he, with that way he has of saying things, so that there is no help for it but to believe him, exclaimed:

“Beatriz, do not brood... No woman has ever given me food for thought, in a certain realm and of a certain kind, but one... whom you know well...! Come, do not be upset, do not make that face... If you will not mock, I will inform you... The barbarian whom I taught a lesson was insulting...”

“Whom?—I asked eagerly, seeing Gonzalo pause.”

“The... the Virgin Mary!...”

“The Virgin Mary!—I repeated astounded.”

“Exactly... On my honour it is true... I know it will seem strange to you... That is why I did not allow it to be divulged; it is better they should imagine something else; thus at least they will not laugh at me... they will not call me Don Quixote...”

“But you... Gonzalo... you... Then, mama, who says that you... that your beliefs...—I stammered, fearing to choke with joy.”

“What have beliefs to do with it?—he retorted almost harshly.—The Virgin is a woman... and before anyone who has shame and hands, a woman is not to be insulted...”