The Gnome · III

The village girls had been back in their homes for nearly an hour. The last light of dusk had faded on the horizon, and the night was beginning to close in ever darker, when Marta and Magdalena, avoiding each other and each by a different path, left the village toward the mysterious fountain. The fountain gushed forth hidden among moss-covered crags at the bottom of a long poplar-lined walk. After the noises of the day gradually died away, and the distant echo of the voices of the plowmen returning astride their teams, singing to the rhythm of the plow handle they dragged through the earth, was no longer heard; after the monotonous sound of the cattle bells, and the shepherds’ voices, and the barking of the dogs rounding up the livestock ceased to be perceived, and the final stroke of the evening prayer bell rang out in the village tower, that twofold and august silence of night and solitude reigned: a silence full of strange and faint murmurs that make it all the more perceptible.

Marta and Magdalena slipped through the labyrinth of trees, and protected by the darkness, reached the end of the walk without seeing each other. Marta knew no fear, and her steps were firm and sure. Magdalena trembled at the mere sound made by her feet treading upon the dry leaves that carpeted the ground. When the two sisters were beside the fountain, the night wind began to agitate the tops of the poplar trees, and to the murmur of its uneven breaths the water of the spring seemed to respond with a measured and uniform sound.

Marta and Magdalena paid attention to those noises that passed beneath their feet like a constant whisper, and above their heads like a lament that arose and faded away only to grow again and expand through the thicket. As the hours passed, that eternal sounding of the air and water began to produce in them a strange exaltation, a sort of vertigo, which, clouding the sight and buzzing in the ear, seemed to derange them completely. Then, in the manner one hears people speak in dreams with a distant and confused echo, they seemed to perceive among those nameless murmurs, inarticulate sounds like those of a child who wants and cannot call its mother; then words that were repeated again and again, always the same; afterwards disconnected and dislocated phrases without order or sense, and lastly... lastly, the wind wandering among the trees and the water leaping from crag to crag began to speak.

And they spoke thus:

THE WATER

Woman!... woman!... hear me... hear me and draw near to hear me, as I kiss your feet while trembling to copy your image in the shadowy depths of my waves. Woman!... hear me, for my murmurs are words.

THE WIND

Child!... gentle child, lift your head, let me peacefully kiss your forehead, while I agitate your hair. Gentle child, listen to me, for I too know how to speak and will murmur affectionate phrases in your ear.

MARTA

Oh! Speak, speak, for I will understand you, because my intellect floats in a vertigo, like your hesitant words float!

Speak, mysterious current.

MAGDALENA

I am afraid. Night air, air of perfumes, refresh my burning brow! Tell me something that instills courage in me, for my spirit wavers.

THE WATER

I have crossed the tenebrous bosom of the earth, I have surprised the secret of its marvelous fecundity, and I know the phenomena of its entrails, where future creations germinate.

My murmur lulls and awakens: awaken you, who understand it.

THE WIND

I am the air moved by the angels with their immense wings as they cross space. I pile up in the West the clouds that offer the sun a bed of purple, and I bring at dawn, with the mists that dissolve into drops, a rain of pearls upon the flowers. My sighs are a balsam: open your heart to me and I will flood it with happiness.

MARTA

When I first heard the murmur of an underground current, it was not in vain that I leaned toward the earth lending it an ear. With it went a mystery that I was bound to understand at last.

MAGDALENA

Sighs of the wind, I know you: you caressed me asleep when, fatigued by weeping, I surrendered to slumber in my childhood, and your rumor seemed to me the words of a mother lulling her daughter.

The water fell silent for a few moments, and sounded only like water breaking among stones. The wind fell silent too, and its noise was nothing other than the sound of moving leaves. Thus some time passed, and afterwards they spoke again, and spoke thus:

THE WATER

After filtering myself drop by drop through the gold vein of an inexhaustible mine; after running through a bed of silver and leaping as if upon pebbles among a countless number of sapphires and amethysts, dragging diamonds and rubies instead of sands, I have united in mysterious marriage with a genius. Rich with its power and with the hidden virtues of the precious stones and metals, of whose atoms I come saturated, I can offer you whatever you yearn for. I have the strength of a spell, the power of a talisman, and the virtue of the seven stones and the seven colors.

THE WIND

I come from wandering across the plain, and like the bee returning to the hive with its spoil of perfumed honeys, I bring sighs of woman, prayers of children, words of chaste love, and aromas of nard and wild white lilies. I have gathered in my path nothing but perfumes and echoes of harmonies; my treasures are immaterial, but they give the peace of the soul and the vague happiness of blissful dreams.

While her sister, drawn as if by an enchantment, leaned over the edge of the fountain to hear better, Magdalena was instinctively separating herself from the crags among which the spring gushed forth.

Both had their eyes fixed, the one on the depths of the waters, the other on the depths of the sky.

And Magdalena exclaimed, watching the stars shine on high:—Those are the halos of light of the invisible angels who guard us.

Meanwhile Marta said, seeing the reflection of the stars tremble in the lymph of the fountain:—Those are the gold particles that the water drags in its mysterious course.

The spring and the wind, which for the second time had fallen silent an instant, spoke again, and said:

THE WATER

Trace my current back, strip off fear like a coarse garment, and dare to cross the thresholds of the unknown. I have guessed that your spirit is of the essence of superior spirits. Envy may have cast you down from heaven perhaps to wallow in the mud of misery. I see, however, upon your shadowy brow a seal of haughtiness that makes you worthy of us, strong and free spirits... Come, I am going to teach you magic words of such virtue that upon pronouncing them the rocks will open and offer you the diamonds that are in their bosom, like the pearls in the shells that fishermen pull from the bottom of the sea. Come, I will give you treasures so that you may live happily; and later, when the prison that imprisons you breaks, your spirit will assimilate to ours, which are human spirits, and all comingling we shall be the motor force, the vital ray of creation, which circulates like a fluid through its underground arteries.

THE WIND

The water licks the earth and lives in the mire: I wander through the ethereal regions and fly in boundless space. Follow the movements of your heart, let your soul rise like the flame and the blue spirals of smoke. Unhappy is he who, having wings, descends to the depths to seek gold, when he might soar to the heights to find love and sentiment!

Live obscure like the violet, for I will bring you in a fecund kiss the vivifying germ of another flower, a sister of yours, and I will tear the mists so that a ray of sun to illuminate your joy is never lacking. Live obscure, live ignored, that when your spirit is unlashed, I will lift it to the regions of light in a red cloud.

The wind and the water grew still, and the gnome appeared.

The gnome was like a little transparent man: a sort of dwarf of light, resembling an ignis fatuus, who laughed out loud without making a sound, and leaped from crag to crag, making one dizzy with his vertiginous mobility. At times he plunged into the water and continued to shine at the bottom like a jewel of stones of a thousand colors; at others he came to the surface and waved his feet and hands, and shook his head from side to side with a rapidity that bordered on the miraculous.

Marta saw the gnome and followed him with a bewildered gaze through all his extravagant evolutions; and when the diabolical spirit finally darted among the ruggedness of Moncayo, like a running flame, shaking its mane of sparks, she felt a sort of irresistible attraction and pursued him at a frenzied run.

“¡Magdalena!,” cried the air as it slowly drifted away; and Magdalena, step by step and like a sleepwalker, guided in her slumber by a friendly voice, followed after the gust, which went sighing across the plain.

Afterwards everything was silent once more in the dark poplar grove, and the wind and water went on resounding with the murmurs and whispers of always.

Magdalena returned to the place pale and full of astonishment. Marta was waited for in vain all night.

When the afternoon of the next day arrived, the girls found a broken pitcher at the edge of the fountain in the poplar grove. It was the pitcher of Marta, of whom nothing was ever heard again. Since then the girls of the village go for water so early that they rise with the sun. Some have assured me that at night the weeping of Marta has been heard on more than one occasion, her spirit living imprisoned in the fountain. I do not know what credit to give to this last part of the story, because the truth is that since then no one has dared to enter the poplar grove to hear it after the tolling of the Ave Maria.