-Xviii- · II

Just in case, Nucha did not venture to make the trial, and devoted herself to tending her treasure in person, leading the busy, meticulous life of mothers, in which it is an event if the broth is smoky, and a disaster if the brazier goes out. She washed her little daughter, dressed her, swaddled her, watched over her while she slept, and entertained her when awake. Life flowed by monotonously, yet exceedingly busy. Good Julián, a witness to these labours, gradually became initiated into what were to him the mysterious arcana of an infant’s toilet and attire, becoming familiar with the multiple articles that compose the complicated layette of new-borns: caps, navel-bands, pilches, diapers, binders, microscopic crocheted booties, hoods, and bibs. Such garments, snowy white, adorned with embroidery and lace, scented with lavender, warmed to the wholesome heat of the brazier-table—domestic warmth if ever there was any—the chaplain often held upon his lap while the mother, with the baby laid face down upon her oilcloth apron, passed and repassed the sponge over that silky flesh, chafed and half raw from the excessive delicacy of its tender epidermis, dusted it with cooling starch powder, and pinching the buttocks with her fingers to make dimples, held them up to Julián, exclaiming in delight:

“Look what a darling... how plump she is growing!”

In the matter of infant nakedness, Julián was no authority, knowing only that of the cherubs on altarpieces; but he reflected within himself that, although original sin had corrupted all flesh, that which was being shown to him was the purest and holiest thing in the world: a lily, a blossom of candour. The soft little head, covered with fine, fair down above the milk-crust, had that peculiar scent noticed in dovecotes where the fledglings are still unfledged; and the tiny hands, whose skin was already filled out with soft fat, and whose fingers rounded like those of the Christ Child when blessing; the face, sculpted in pink wax; the mouth, toothless and moist as pale coral newly drawn from the sea; the little feet, glowing at the heel from kicking in graceful motion, were so many trifles provoking that mixed sentiment which very small children awaken even in the hardest soul: a complex and humorous feeling, in which compassion, self-abnegation, a little respect, and a great deal of gentle banter without bitterness are combined.

In Nucha, the spectacle produced the profound impressions of the maternal honeymoon, heightened by a nervous temperament and an already morbid sensitivity. To that soft lump, which still seemed to retain the inconsistency of gelatinous protoplasm, which had as yet no self-consciousness nor lived for anything beyond sensation, the mother attributed understanding and foresight, breathed her very soul into it with wild kisses, and, in her view, the child understood everything, knew and performed a thousand wonderfully timely things, and even mocked discreetly, in her own fashion, the nurse’s words and deeds. “Delusions imposed by nature for very wise ends,” explained Juncal. What was it on the first day when a smile banished the grave, comical seriousness of that tiny face, and with celestial expression parted the narrow line of her lips! It was impossible not to recall the hackneyed simile of the dawn’s light scattering the darkness. The mother was beside herself with joy.

“Again, again!” she exclaimed. “My treasure, my heaven, my darling, my little pet, laugh, laugh!”

For the time being, the smile did not deign to appear again. The dolt of a nurse denied the fact, which infuriated the mother. The next day it fell to Julián’s honour to kindle the fleeting spark of dawning intelligence in the child, waving some shiny trinket before her eyes. Julián was losing his fear of the infant, whom at first he had thought as easily crushed between his fingers as a meringue; and while the mother rolled up the binder or warmed the diaper, he was wont to hold her upon his lap.

“I trust you more than the nurse,” Nucha would say to him confidentially, giving vent to a secret maternal jealousy. “The nurse is incapable of any sense... Just imagine, to make the parting in her hair she rests the comb upon her chin and draws it up over her mouth and nose until she hits the middle of her forehead; she knows no other way... I insisted that she should not eat with her fingers, and what did I gain? Now she eats roast meat with a spoon... It is a farce, Julián. One of these days she will ruin the child for me.”

The chaplain was perfecting his knowledge of the art of holding a baby in one’s arms without making it cry or scream. His friendship with the little one was cemented by an occurrence which ought almost to be passed over in silence: a certain warm moisture which one day Julián felt penetrating through his trousers... What an event! Nucha and he celebrated it with shouting and laughter, as if it were the most entertaining and drollest thing in the world. Julián jumped for joy and held his sides, which ached with so much laughing. The mother offered him her oilcloth apron, which he declined; he already had an old pair of trousers destined to perish in the service, and for nothing in the world would he forego feeling that warm wave... Its contact melted a certain crust of austerity that had congealed over a gentle, virginal heart ever since his seminary days, ever since he had resolved to renounce all family and home on earth by entering the priesthood; and at the same time it kindled in him a mysterious fire, a human tenderness, expansive and sweet; the priest was beginning to love the child with blindness, to fancy that if he saw her die, he would die too, and many other foolish notions of the sort, which he justified with the idea that, after all, the little girl was an angel. He never tired of admiring her, devouring her with his eyes, contemplating her liquid and mysterious eyes, as though drowned in milk, in the depths of which serenity itself seemed to dwell.

A painful thought assailed him from time to time. He remembered that he had dreamed of establishing in that house a Christian marriage fashioned after the model of the Holy Family. Well, the holy group was dissolved: Saint Joseph was lacking, or was replaced by a clergyman, which was worse. The Marquis was hardly ever to be seen; since the birth of the child, instead of becoming more domestic and sociable, he had returned to his old ways, his life of hunting, of excursions to the houses of abbotts and squires who possessed good hounds and loved the field, and to distant shooting-grounds. Sometimes he spent a week away from the Pazos de Ulloa. His speech was harsher, his temper more selfish and impatient, his desires and commands expressed in a rougher tone. And Julián observed still more alarming signs. It troubled him to see that Sabel was once more receiving her former court as favourite sultana, and that the Sabia and her brood, with all the gossiping crones and ragged beggars of the parish, were swarming there, taking to flight as soon as he approached, carrying suspicious bundles in their bosoms or under their aprons. Perucho no longer hid himself; rather, one met him everywhere tripping up one’s heels, and, in short, things were returning to the state and condition they had had before.

The good chaplain tried to deceive himself with false pretences, telling himself that all this meant nothing; but cursed chance insisted on opening his eyes when he would have preferred them closed. One morning, rising earlier than usual to say his Mass, he resolved to warn Sabel to have his chocolate ready in half an hour. He knocked in vain at her room, situated near the tower where Julián slept. He went downstairs in the hope of finding her in the kitchen, and passing before the door of the large study adjoining the archives, where Don Pedro had installed himself since the birth of his daughter, he saw the wench coming out, carelessly dressed and heavy with sleep. The psychological rules applicable to guilty consciences required that Sabel should be disconcerted: it was Julián who was overwhelmed with confusion. Not only was he confused, but he went upstairs again to his bedroom, feeling a strange sensation, as if someone had dealt a heavy blow to his legs, breaking them beneath him. On entering his room, he thought this or something like it:

“Now then, who is the brave man that will say Mass today?”