The Gnome · I

The village girls were returning from the fountain with their pitchers on their heads; they returned singing and laughing with a noise and a bustle that could only be compared to the cheerful uproar of a flock of swallows when they flutter dense as hail around the weathercock of a bell tower.

In the porch of the church, and sitting at the foot of a juniper tree, was old tío Gregorio. Tio Gregorio was the oldest man in the place: he was nearly ninety winters old, with white hair, a smiling mouth, cheerful eyes, and trembling hands. As a child he had been a shepherd, as a youth a soldier; afterwards he cultivated a small estate, his parents’ heritage, until at last his strength failed him and he sat quietly waiting for death, which he neither feared nor desired. No one told a joke with more grace than he, nor knew more stupendous stories, nor so opportunely brought up a proverb, a maxim, or an adage.

The girls, upon seeing him, hurried their pace with the intention of going to speak to him, and when they reached the porch, all began to beg him to tell them a story to pass the time that still lacked for nightfall, which was not much, for the setting sun struck obliquely across the land, and the shadows of the mountains lengthened momentarily along the plain.

Tio Gregorio listened smilingly to the girls’ request, who, once they obtained the promise that he would relate something to them, left their pitchers on the ground and, sitting down around him, formed a circle, in the center of which remained the old man, who began to speak to them in this manner:

“I will not tell you a story, for although I remember some at this moment, they pertain to matters so serious that neither would you, being giddy girls, lend me your attention to listen to them, nor would I, given the lateness of the afternoon, have the time left to relate them. I will give you a piece of advice instead.”

“A piece of advice!” exclaimed the girls with a visible air of ill humor. “Bah! it is not to hear advice that we have stopped; when we need it, the village priest will give it to us.”

“It is,” continued the old man with his habitual smile and his cracked, trembling voice, “that the village priest perhaps would not know how to give it to you on this occasion as opportunely as tío Gregorio can give it; for he, occupied in his prayers and litanies, will not have noticed, as I have, that every day you go for water to the fountain earlier and return later.”

The girls looked at each other with an imperceptible smile of mockery, and not a few of those standing behind touched their foreheads with a finger, accompanying their action with a significant gesture.

“And what evil do you find in our stopping at the fountain to chat for a while with our friends and neighbors?...” said one of them. “Are there perchance gossips running about the place because the lads come out to the path to flatter us or come to offer to carry our pitchers to the entrance of the village?”

“There is everything of the sort,” replied the old man to the lass who had addressed him on behalf of her companions. “The old women of the place murmur that today the girls go to fool around and dally in a place where they used to arrive in a hurry and trembling just to fetch the water, for only from there can it be brought; and I find it wrong that you little by little lose the fear that the site where the fountain is situated inspires in everyone, because it could happen that one day night might surprise you there.”

Tio Gregorio pronounced these last words in a tone so full of mystery that the girls opened their eyes in fright to look at him, and with a mixture of curiosity and mockery insisted once more:

“Night! Well, what happens at night in that place, that you make such a fuss and speak to us in such fearful and dark words about what might happen to us there? Will the wolves eat us perhaps?”

“When Moncayo covers itself with snow, the wolves driven from their lairs come down in packs along its slope, and more than once we have heard them howl in a horrific concert, not only in the surroundings of the fountain, but in the very streets of the place; but the wolves are not the most terrible guests of Moncayo: in its deep chasms, in its solitary and rugged summits, in its hollow bosom, live certain demonic spirits that during the night descend along its slopes like a swarm, and populate the void, and swarm in the plain, and leap from rock to rock, play among the waters or rock in the bare branches of the trees. They are the ones who howl in the crevices of the crags; they the ones who form and push those immense balls of snow that come rolling down from the high peaks, and sweep along and crush whatever they find in their path; they the ones who knock with hail on our windowpanes on rainy nights, and run like blue and light flames over the surface of the marshes. Among these spirits, which driven from the plains by the blessings and exorcisms of the Church have gone to take refuge in the inaccessible crests of the mountains, there are some of a different nature, and which to our eyes appear clothed in varied forms. The most dangerous ones, however, those that insinuate themselves with sweet words into the hearts of young women and dazzle them with magnificent promises, are the gnomes. The gnomes live in the bowels of the mountains; they know their subterranean paths, and, eternal guardians of the treasures they enclose, they watch day and night beside the veins of metals and precious stones. Do you see?” continued the old man, pointing with the stick that served as his support to the summit of Moncayo, which rose to his right, standing out dark and gigantic against the violet and misty sky of twilight; “do you see that immense mass still crowned with snow? Well, in its bosom those demonic spirits have their dwellings. The palace they inhabit is horrifying and magnificent at the same time.”

Many years ago a shepherd, following a stray beast, penetrated through the mouth of one of those caves whose entrances are covered by thick bushes, and whose end no one has seen. When he returned to the place, he was as pale as death; he had surprised the secret of the gnomes; he had breathed their poisoned atmosphere, and he paid for his daring with his life; but before dying he related stupendous things. Walking further along that cavern, he had finally found some underground and immense galleries, illuminated with a dim and fantastic glow produced by the phosphorescence of the rocks, resembling there large pieces of crystal set in a thousand whimsical and strange forms. The floor, the vault, and the walls of those extensive halls, the work of nature, seemed marbled like the richest marbles, but the veins that crossed them were of gold and silver, and among those shining veins could be seen, as if embedded, a multitude of precious stones of all colors and sizes. There were hyacinths and emeralds in heaps, and diamonds, and rubies, and sapphires, and I know not what, many other unknown stones that he did not know how to name; but so large and so beautiful that his eyes were dazzled upon beholding them. No external noise reached the depths of the fantastic cavern; only at intervals were perceived some long and pitiful moans of the air running through that enchanted labyrinth, a confused rumor of subterranean fire boiling compressed, and murmurs of running waters passing without anyone knowing where.

The shepherd, alone and lost in that vastness, walked I know not how many hours without finding the way out, until at last he stumbled upon the source of the spring whose murmur he had heard. This burst from the ground like a marvelous fountain, with a leap of water crowned with foam, which fell forming a showy cascade and producing a loud murmur as it moved away, slipping among the clefts of the rocks. Around it grew plants never seen before, some with broad, thick leaves, others thin and long like floating ribbons. Half-hidden among that humid foliage wandered strange beings, partly men, partly reptiles, or both at once, for transforming themselves continually, now they seemed human creatures, deformed and tiny, now luminous salamanders or fleeting flames that danced in circles upon the crest of the jet. There, stirring in all directions, running along the ground in the shape of repugnant and misshapen dwarfs, climbing the walls, drooling and writhing in the figure of reptiles, or dancing with the appearance of will-o’-the-wisps upon the surface of the water, walked the gnomes, lords of those places, counting and stirring their fabulous riches. They know where misers keep those treasures that heirs afterwards seek in vain; they know the place where the Moors, before fleeing, hid their jewels; and the trinkets that are lost, the coins that are misplaced, everything that has some value and disappears, they are the ones who seek it, find it, and steal it, to hide it in their lairs, because they know how to walk the entire world underground and by secret and unknown paths. There they had, then, heaped in a pile all kinds of rare and precious objects. There were jewels of inestimable value, necklaces and chokers of pearls and fine stones; golden amphorae, of ancient shape, full of rubies; chased goblets, rich weapons, coins with busts and legends impossible to know or decipher; treasures, in short, so fabulous and immense that the imagination can scarcely conceive them. And everything shone at once, casting colored sparks and reflections so vivid that it seemed as if everything were burning and moving and trembling. At least, the shepherd related that it had seemed so to him. Upon reaching this point, the old man paused for a moment: the girls, who had begun by listening to Uncle Gregorio’s tale with a mocking smile, then kept a profound silence, waiting for him to continue, with frightened eyes, lips slightly parted, and curiosity and interest painted on their faces; one of them finally broke the silence and exclaimed unable to contain herself, enthusiastic upon hearing the description of the fabulous riches that had offered themselves to the shepherd’s sight.

“And what, didn’t he bring anything of that back?”

“Nothing,” replied Uncle Gregorio.

“How foolish!” exclaimed the girls in chorus.

“Heaven helped him in that ordeal,” continued the old man, “for at the moment when avarice, which overcomes everything, began to dispel his fear, and hallucinated by the sight of those jewels, a single one of which would suffice to make him powerful, the shepherd was about to take hold of some, he says he heard, marvel at the event! he heard clearly and distinctly in those depths, and despite the laughter and voices of the gnomes, the seething of the subterranean fire, the rumor of the running waters, and the laments of the air, he heard, I say, as if he were at the foot of the hill where it is found, the clamor of the bell that is in the hermitage of Our Lady of Moncayo.”

Upon hearing the bell that tolled the Angelus, the shepherd fell to the ground invoking the Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and without knowing how or by where he found himself out of those places, and on the path that leads to the village, sprawled on a trail and prey to great stupor, as if he had emerged from a dream.