-Xviii- · I

For many long days Nucha lingered before those gloomy portals called the gates of death, with one foot upon the threshold, as if saying: “Shall I enter? Shall I not enter?” She was urged inward by the horrible physical tortures that had shattered her nerves, the consuming fever that had unsettled her brain when the surge of useless milk invaded her breasts, the grief of being unable to offer her child that nourishment which was choking her, and the exhaustion of her frame from which life was ebbing drop by drop without any possibility of staying it. But she was summoned outward by youth, by that yearning to exist which animates every living organism, by the skill of the great hygienist Juncal, and above all by a tiny, reddish, soft hand, a little clenched fist that peeked out between the lace of a camisole and the folds of a shawl.

The first day Julián was permitted to see the patient, it was not many days since she had begun to leave her bed, to lie, wrapped in blankets and shawls, upon an ancient and spacious sofa. She was not yet allowed to sit upright, and her head rested on pillows folded double. Her wasted and bloodless countenance was yellow as an ivory carving within the frame of her glossy black hair. She squinted more, for during those days her optic nerve had been greatly weakened. She smiled gently at the chaplain and pointed to a chair. Julián fixed upon her that gaze overflowing with compassion, that tell-tale glance which we vainly seek to repress and quench when we approach a dangerously sick person.

“I find you looking remarkably well, madam,” said the chaplain, lying like a knave.

“As for you,” she answered languidly, “you are looking somewhat pulled down.”

He confessed that, indeed, he had not been well since... since he had caught a slight chill. He was ashamed to relate the story of the night of watching, the swoon, the profound moral and physical shock suffered on that occasion. Nucha began to speak to him of indifferent matters, and then passed without transition to ask him:

“Have you seen the little one?”

“Yes, madam... On the day of the christening. Blessed angel! She cried lustily when they put the salt to her lips and when she felt the cold water...”

“Ah! Since then she has grown a good span at least and has become exceedingly beautiful.” And raising her voice with an effort, she added: “Nurse, nurse! Bring the baby!”

Footsteps were heard like those of a walking colossus, and the earthy-complexioned strapping wench entered, looking very grand in her new gown of blue merino edged with black velvet ribbon, in which she resembled that traditional giantess of the cathedral of Santiago known as the Coca. Like a little bird perched upon a stout tree-trunk, the innocent babe lay nestled against the mighty bosom that nourished her. She was asleep, and wore that tranquil, gentle, and imperceptible breathing which makes the sleep of infants sacred. Julián never tired of gazing upon her thus.

“Little saint of God!” he murmured, pressing his lips very softly to her cap, not daring to touch her brow.

“Take her, Julián... You will see how heavy she is. Nurse, give him the baby...”

She weighed no more than a bunch of flowers, but the chaplain swore and protested that she seemed made of lead. The nurse waited standing, and he had sat down with the infant in his arms.

“Leave her with me a little...” he pleaded. “Now, while she sleeps... She will certainly not wake for a long time.”

“I will call you when you are needed. Nurse, you may go.”

The conversation turned upon a very ready topic, and one greatly to Nucha’s liking: the charms of the little girl... She possessed a great many, indeed she did, and anyone who doubted it would be a consummate dunce. For instance: she opened her eyes with incomparable roguishness; she sneezed with consummate cunning; she squeezed anyone’s finger with her little hand so tightly that the strength of a Hercules was needed to get free; and she performed other drolleries, better kept silent than recorded in a chronicle. As she recounted them, Nucha’s bloodless face grew animated, her eyes shone, and laughter parted her lips two or three times. But suddenly her face clouded over, so much so that tears danced between her eyelashes, though she did not let them fall.

“They would not let me nurse her, Julián... Whims of Señor Juncal, who applies hygiene to everything, and hygiene here, and hygiene there... It seems to me that I would not have died from trying for two months, just two months. Perhaps I might have found myself better than I am, and not had to spend an eternity nailed to this sofa, with my body held fast and my fancy running wild through the wide world... For as it is, I have no rest: I am forever fancying that the nurse will smother the child or drop her. Now I am happy, having her here close to me.”

She smiled at the sleeping infant, and added:

“Do you not see a resemblance...?”

“To you?”

“To her father!... She is the very image of him in the shape of her forehead...”

The chaplain did not express his opinion. He changed the subject, and continued that day and the following ones to perform the charitable work of visiting the sick. In Nucha’s slow convalescence and total solitude, she had good need that someone should devote himself to so pious an office. Máximo Juncal came every other day, but almost always in a hurry, for he was acquiring an extensive practice: they even summoned him from Vilamorta. The doctor talked politics, exhaling a breath smelling of rum, endeavouring to prick and exasperate Julián; and, in truth, if Julián had been capable of taking offence, there would have been ample cause in the news Máximo brought. It was all pulled-down churches, anti-religious outrages, Protestant chapels established here and there, freedom of education, of worship, of this, that, and the other... Julián confined himself to deploring such excesses and wishing that matters might be settled, which gave Máximo no scope for starting one of his favourite brawls, so beneficial to the dispersal of his bile and so fertile in incidents when he encountered stubborn Carlist priests like the Abbot of Boán or the Archpriest.

When the pugnacious doctor was not there, all was peace and stillness in the invalid’s chamber. It was disturbed only by the weeping, promptly hushed, of the infant. The chaplain would read the Christian Year aloud, and the room was filled with tales of romantic and poetic flavour: “Cecilia, a most beautiful maiden and illustrious Roman lady, consecrated her body to Jesus Christ; her parents betrothed her to a nobleman named Valerian, and the wedding was celebrated with great festivities, rejoicings, and dancing... Only Cecilia’s heart was sorrowful...” Then followed the narrative of the mystical bridal night, of Valerian’s conversion, of the angel that watched over Cecilia to guard her purity, with the glorious and epic conclusion of martyrdom. At other times it was a soldier, like Saint Menna; a bishop, like Saint Severus... The dramatic and detailed narrative recounted the examination by the judge, the brave and free answers of the martyrs, the tortures, the scourging with ox-hide thongs, the rack, the iron claws, the blazing torches applied to their sides... “And the soldier of Christ maintained a stout and quiet heart, with serene countenance, with a mouth full of laughter (as though it were not he but another who suffered), making mock of his tortures and begging that they be increased...” Such readings had a magical effect, particularly at the close of bleak winter afternoons, when the dry leaves of the trees swirled and danced, and dense, cottony clouds drifted slowly past the panes of the deep window. Far away in the distance could be heard the perpetual weeping of the mill-dam, and carts creaked past laden with maize stalks or pine boughs. Nucha listened attentively, resting her chin on her hand. From time to time her bosom rose in a sigh.

It was not the first time since the delivery that Julián had noticed a great sadness in the lady. The chaplain had received a letter from his mother which perhaps contained the key to Nucha’s sorrows. It appeared that Señorita Rita had so wheedled the old aunt in Orense that the latter had made her her sole heir, disinheriting her goddaughter. Moreover, Señorita Carmen was every day more infatuated with her student, and people in the town believed that if Don Manuel Pardo refused his consent, the girl would be placed in wardship. Terrible things were happening with Señorita Manolita too: Don Víctor de la Formoseda was jilting her for a shopgirl, the niece of a canon. In short, Misia Rosario prayed to God for patience to bear so many tribulations (those of the Pardo family were as her own to Misia Rosario). If all this had reached Nucha’s ears through her husband or her father, it was no wonder she sighed so. Furthermore, her physical decline was so visible! Nucha no longer resembled any Virgin except the emaciated image of Our Lady of Solitude. Juncal felt her pulse attentively, ordered highly nutritious food, and watched her with alarming persistence.

When attending to the child, Nucha revived. She cared for her with feverish activity. She wanted to do everything for her herself, leaving to the nurse only the purely material part of her rearing. The nurse, she used to say, was a cask full of milk placed there to have the spigot turned when necessary to let flow the stream: neither more nor less. The comparison with a cask was exact: the nurse had the shape, colour, and intellect of a cask. She possessed also, like casks, a mighty belly. It was a delight to see her eat, or rather gorge: in the kitchen, Sabel amused herself by heaping her plate or bowl to overflowing, setting half a loaf of bread before her, fattening her like a turkey. Beside such a monster, Sabel gave herself the airs of a princess, a model of refined tastes and delicate habits. As everything in this world is relative, to the downstairs folk of the manor house the nurse represented a comical and ridiculous savage, and they laughed all the more at her blunders the more easily they might have committed greater ones themselves. In truth the nurse was a curious object, not only for the rustics, but, for different reasons, for an investigating ethnographer. Máximo Juncal related interesting details to Julián. In the valley where the parish from which the nurse came is situated—a valley located on the furthest confines of Galicia, bordering upon Portugal—the women are distinguished by their physical condition and mode of life: they are a species of Amazons, remnants of the Galician women warriors mentioned by Latin geographers; who, if today they can make war only upon their husbands, break clods of earth with the same fury with which they once fought; they walk about half-naked, displaying their sturdy and robust flesh; they plough, dig, reap, load carts with brushwood and produce, bear enormous weights upon their caryatid shoulders, and live, if not without intercourse, at least without the assistance of men, for the males of the valley usually emigrate to Lisbon in search of employment from the age of fourteen, returning to their native district only for a couple of months to marry and propagate their race, fleeing as soon as their function as hive-drones is fulfilled. Sometimes in Portugal they receive tidings of conjugal infidelities, and crossing the frontier by night, stab the sleeping lovers to death: this was the crime of the One-Eyed protected by Barbacana, whose story Juncal had also related. Nevertheless, the women of Castrodorna are generally as chaste as they are rustic. The nurse did not belie her breed in the disproportionate width of her hips and the roundness of her sturdy limbs. It cost Nucha a triumph to dress her rationally and make her exchange her short skirt of green baize, which did not cover her bare calves, for another longer and more respectable, allowing her only the bodice, the classic garment of a wet-nurse, which leaves her full breasts overflowing, and the characteristic earrings of enormous hoops, the Roman torquis preserved from time immemorial in the valley. It was a battle to make her wear shoes every day, for all her peers reserve them for high feast days; it was a penance to teach her the name and use of every object, even the simplest and commonest; it was a waste of breath to convince her that the child she was nursing was a delicate and fragile being, not to be carried loosely wrapped in scraps of scarlet baize inside a basket padded with bracken, and left in the shade of an oak tree at the mercy of wind, sun, and rain, like the new-born babes of the valley of Castrodorna; and Máximo Juncal, who, although a great champion of hygienic contrivances, was also an admirer of the miraculous virtues of nature, found some difficulty in reconciling both extremes, and extricated himself by appealing to his most recent reading, The Origin of Species by Darwin, and applying certain laws of adaptation to environment, heredity, and so forth, which enabled him to assert that the nurse’s method, if it did not burst the infant like a firecracker, would strengthen her admirably.