The Gnome · II

From then on everyone understood why the local spring sometimes brings up among its waters something like an extremely fine gold dust; and when night falls, in the murmur it makes, confusing words are heard, deceitful words with which the gnomes who infect it from its birth seek to seduce the unwary who lend them an ear, promising them riches and treasures that are to be their damnation.

When Uncle Gregorio reached this point in his story, night had already fallen and the church bell began to toll for the Angelus. The girls crossed themselves devoutly, murmuring a Hail Mary in a low voice, and after saying goodbye to Uncle Gregorio, who once again advised them not to waste time at the spring, each one took her pitcher, and all together they came out silent and preoccupied from the church porch. Far already from the spot where they had met the little old man, and when they were in the village square where they were to part ways, the boldest and most talkative of them exclaimed:

“Do you believe any of the nonsense Uncle Gregorio has told us?”

“Not I!” said one.

“Nor I!” exclaimed another.

“Neither do I! Nor I!” repeated the others, mocking with laughter their momentary credulity.

The group of lasses broke up, each one heading off toward one of the corners of the square. As soon as they turned the corners of the different streets that led out into that place, two girls—the only ones who had not yet opened their lips to protest with their jests against the veracity of Uncle Gregorio’s tale, and who, preoccupied with the marvelous narrative, seemed absorbed in their own thoughts—walked off together and with that slowness typical of absent-minded people, down a dark, narrow, and winding alley.

Of those two girls, the elder, who seemed to be about twenty years old, was named Marta; and the younger, who had not yet turned sixteen, Magdalena.

For the duration of the walk, both kept a profound silence; but when they reached the threshold of their house and left the pitchers on the stone bench of the hallway, Marta said to Magdalena: “And do you believe in the wonders of Moncayo and the spirits of the spring?...” “I,” Magdalena replied simply, “I believe in everything. Do you perhaps doubt it?” “Oh, no!” Marta hastened to interrupt. “I also believe in everything, in everything... that I wish to believe.”

Marta and Magdalena were sisters. Orphaned from their early childhood, they lived miserably in the shadow of a female relative of their mother’s who had taken them in out of charity, and who at every turn made them feel the weight of her favor through her harsh rebukes and humiliating words. Everything seemed to contribute to tightening the bonds of affection between those two sisterly souls, not only through the tie of blood but through those of misery and suffering; and yet, between Marta and Magdalena there existed a silent emulation, a secret antipathy that could only be explained by the study of their characters, as absolutely opposed as their physical types.

Marta was haughty, vehement in her inclinations, and of a savage roughness in the expression of her affections: she knew neither how to laugh nor how to cry, and for that reason she had never cried nor laughed. Magdalena, on the contrary, was humble, loving, kind-hearted, and on more than one occasion she was seen to cry and laugh at the same time like children.

Marta had eyes blacker than the night, and from between her dark eyelashes it might be said that at intervals sparks of fire leaped out like from a burning coal.

Magdalena’s blue pupil seemed to swim in a fluid of light within the golden ring of her blonde eyelashes. And everything in them was in harmony with the diverse expression of their eyes. Marta, lean-fleshed, sallow-complexioned, of slender stature, rigid movements, and dark, crisp hair that shadowed her forehead and fell over her shoulders like a velvet mantle, formed a singular contrast with Magdalena, white, rosy, small, childlike in her countenance and forms, and with blonde braids that encircled her temples, resembling the golden halo of an angel’s head.

In spite of the inexplicable repulsion they felt for one another, the two sisters had lived until then in a sort of indifference, which might have been mistaken for peace and affection: they had had no caresses to dispute, nor preferences to envy; equals in misfortune and sorrow, Marta had shut herself up to suffer in a selfish and haughty silence; and Magdalena, finding her sister’s heart dry, wept alone when tears involuntarily surged to her eyes.

No sentiment was common between them; they never confided their joys and sorrows to each other, and yet, the only secret they sought to hide in the depths of their hearts, they had guessed from one another with that marvelous instinct of the enamored and jealous woman. Marta and Magdalena had indeed fixed their eyes upon the same man.

The passion of the one was a tenaciously stubborn desire, the child of an indomitable and willful character; in the other, affection resembled that vague and spontaneous tenderness of adolescence, which, needing an object to employ itself upon, loves the first one that presents itself to its sight. Both guarded the secret of their love, because the man who had inspired it might perhaps have made mock of an affection that could be interpreted as absurd ambition in lowly and miserable plebeian girls. Both, despite the distance that separated them from the object of their passion, nourished a remote hope of possessing him.

Near the place, and upon a height overlooking the surrounding area, stood an ancient castle abandoned by its owners. The old women, on nights of storytelling, recounted a tale full of wonders concerning its founders. They told that while the King of Aragon was at war with his enemies, his resources already exhausted, abandoned by his partisans and on the verge of losing the throne, a little shepherdess from that region appeared before him one day, and after revealing to him the existence of some underground passages through which he could cross Moncayo without his enemies noticing, she gave him a treasure in fine pearls, extremely rich precious stones, and bars of gold and silver, with which the king paid his troops, raised a powerful army, and marching beneath the earth for a whole night, fell upon his adversaries the next day and routed them, securing the crown upon his head.

After he had achieved such a signal victory, they recount that the king said to the shepherdess:—Ask me for whatever you wish, for even if it were half my realm, I swear I shall give it to you instantly.

“I want nothing more than to return to tending my flock,” replied the shepherdess.—You shall tend naught save my borders, “replied the king, and he gave her the lordship of all the march, and commanded a fortress to be built for her in the village most bordering on Castile, whither the shepherdess moved, now married to one of the king’s favorites—a nobleman, gallant, brave, and lord likewise of many fortresses and many fiefs.”

Uncle Gregorio’s stupendous account concerning the gnomes of Moncayo, the secret of which lay in the local spring, once again exalted the wild fantasies of the two enamored sisters, completing, so to speak, the ignored history of the treasure found by the shepherdess of the legend; a treasure whose memory had disturbed more than once their nights of insomnia and bitterness, presenting itself to their imagination as a faint ray of hope.

The night following the afternoon of the encounter with Uncle Gregorio, all the girls of the place conversed in their homes about the stupendous story he had told them. Marta and Magdalena kept a profound silence, and neither on that night, nor throughout the entire day that dawned thereafter, did they ever exchange a single word relating to the matter, the theme of all conversations and the object of their neighbors’ comments.

When the usual hour arrived, Magdalena took her pitcher and said to her sister:—Shall we go to the fountain?—Marta did not reply, and Magdalena said to her again:—Shall we go to the fountain? Mind, if we do not hurry, the sun will set before we return.—Marta exclaimed at last with a brief and harsh tone:—I do not want to go today.—Nor do I either—added Magdalena after a moment of silence, during which she kept her eyes fixed upon those of her sister, as if she wished to divine in them the cause of her resolution.