-Xix- · III

On the third day Golfín said to him:

“You have now become acquainted with a great part of the wonders of the visible world. Now you must see your own person.”

A mirror was brought, and Pablo looked at himself in it.

“This is I...” he said in wild amazement. “It costs me an effort to believe it.... And how is it that I am inside this hard, still water? What a wonderful thing glass is! It seems incredible that men should have made this stone atmosphere.... Upon my life, I am not ugly... is it not true, cousin? And you, when you look at yourself here, do you appear as lovely as you are? It cannot be. Look at yourself in the clear sky, and there you will see your image. You will think you are looking at the angels when you see yourself.”

Alone with Florentina, when she lavished upon him at dusk the attentions and care an invalid requires, Pablo would say to her:

“My cousin, my father read to me that passage in our history when a man named Christopher Columbus discovered the New World, never before seen by any man of Europe. That navigator opened the eyes of the known world that it might see another more beautiful. I cannot picture him to myself except as a Teodoro Golfín, and Europe as a great blind man to whom America and its wonders were the light. I too have discovered a New World. You are my America; you are that first lovely island where the navigator set his foot. He had yet to see the continent with its immense forests and rivers. For me too, perhaps, the loveliest sights remain to be seen....”

Then he fell into deep meditation, and at the end of it asked:

“Where is Nela?”

“I know not what ails the poor girl,” said Florentina. “She does not wish to see you, no doubt.”

“She is shy and very modest,” replied Pablo. “She fears to disturb the household. Florentina, in confidence I will tell you that I love her dearly. You will love her dearly too. I long passionately to see that good comrade and friend of mine.”

“I will go and look for her myself tomorrow.”

“Yes, yes... but do not stay away long. When I do not see you, I am very lonely.... I have grown used to seeing you, and these three days seem centuries of happiness to me.... Do not rob me of a single minute. My father told me last night that after seeing you I ought to have no curiosity to see any other woman.”

“What nonsense!” said the young lady, blushing. “There are others far prettier than I....”

“No, no, everyone says no,” asserted Pablo with vehemence, turning his bandaged face toward his cousin as though across all obstacles he still wished to see her. “Formerly they told me that and I would not believe it; but now that I have consciousness of the visible world and of real beauty, I believe it, yes, I believe it. You are a perfect type of beauty; there is nothing beyond it, there cannot be.... Give me your hand. The cousin pressed the young lady’s hand passionately between his own.”

“Now I laugh,” he added, “at my ridiculous vanity when blind, at my foolish determination to judge the appearance of things without sight.... I believe the amazement reality produced in me will last all my life.... Reality! He who does not possess it is an idiot.... Florentina, I was an idiot.”

“No, cousin; you were always and are still very wise.... But do not excite your imagination now.... It will soon be bedtime. Don Teodoro has ordered that no one should talk to you at this hour, because it keeps you awake.... If you do not hold your tongue, I shall go.”

“Is it night already?”

“Yes, it is night.”

“Well, be it night or day, I want to talk,” asserted Pablo, tossing restlessly upon his couch, on which he lay dressed and very excited. “On one condition I will be silent, and that is that you do not leave my side, and from time to time tap upon the bed so that I may know you are there.”

“Very well, I will do so; and there is the first token of life,” said Florentina, tapping the bed.

“When I hear you laugh, I seem to breathe a cool, perfumed air, and all my former senses set to work to reproduce your presence in different ways. The memory of your image remains with me in such a manner that though bandaged I see you just the same.”

“Is the chattering beginning again?... I shall call Don Teodoro,” said the young lady playfully.

“No... keep still. If I cannot be silent... if I were silent, all that I think, all that I feel, and all that I see here inside my brain would torment me more.... And you would have me sleep!... Sleep! When I have you in here, Florentina, turning round and round in my brain and driving me mad.... I suffer and enjoy what cannot be told, for there are no words to express it. The whole night I spend talking with you and with Nela... poor Nela! I have a great curiosity to see her, a very great curiosity.”

“I will go and look for her myself tomorrow.... Come, an end of talking. Keep quiet, or I am off.”

“Stay.... I will talk to myself.... Now I am going to repeat the things I said to you last night, when we two were talking alone... I am going to recall what you said to me....”

“I?”

“That is to say, the things I fancied I heard from your lips.... Silence, Señorita de Penáguilas... I am communing alone with my imagination.”

On the following day, when Florentina presented herself before her cousin, she said to him:

“I was bringing Mariquilla, and she ran away from me. What ingratitude!”

“And have you not looked for her?”

“Where?... She fled from me! This afternoon I will go out again and look for her until I find her.”

“No, do not go out,” said Pablo eagerly. “She will appear, she will come of herself.”

“She seems mad.”

“Does she know I have my sight?”

“I told her myself. But she has lost her wits, without doubt. She says I am the Most Holy Virgin, and kisses my dress.”

“The truth is you produce the same effect upon her as upon everyone else. Nela is so good.... Poor girl! We must protect her, Florentina, protect her, do you not think so?”

“She is an ungrateful thing,” said Florentina sadly.

“Ah, do not believe that! Nela cannot be ungrateful. She is very good... I am very fond of her.... You must look for her and bring her here to me.”

“I will go.”

“No, no, not you,” said Pablo promptly, taking his cousin’s hand. “Your duty, foolish young lady, is to stay with me. If Señor Golfín does not come soon to take off the bandage and put on the glasses, I will take it off myself. Since yesterday I have not seen you, and that is not to be endured, no, it is not to be endured.... Has Don Teodoro come?”

“He is downstairs with your father and mine. He will be up directly. Have patience; you are like a schoolboy.”

Pablo sat up wildly.

“Light, light!... It is an outrage to keep a man so long in the dark. One cannot live like this... I am dying. I need my daily bread, I need the use of my eyes.... Today I have not seen you, cousin, and I am frantic to see you. I have a raging thirst to see you. Long live reality!... Blessed be God who created you, enchanting woman, epitome of all beauty.... But if after creating beauty God had not created hearts, how foolish His work would be!... Light, light!”

Teodoro came up and opened the gates of reality to him, flooding his soul with joy. Afterwards he passed the day quietly, talking of various matters. Not until night did he turn his thoughts again to a point in his life which seemed to recede, to diminish, and to fade away, like ships that on a calm day are lost on the horizon. Like one recalling an event of long ago, Pablo said:

“Has Nela not appeared?”

Florentina told him no, and they spoke of other things.

That night Pablo heard voices in the house at an unseasonable hour. He thought he recognized the voice of Teodoro Golfín, that of Florentina, and that of his father. Afterwards he fell quietly asleep, continuing in his dreams to be haunted by images of all he had seen and by the phantoms of his own imagining. His sleep, which began sweet and peaceful, became afterwards troubled and painful, for in the deep recesses of his soul, as in a newly illuminated cavern, the beauties and uglinesses of the material world struggled together, awakening passions, burying memories, and throwing his whole soul into confusion. On the following day, according to Golfín’s promise, he was to be permitted to rise and walk about the house.