-Viii- · I

The Nonsense Continues

On the following day, Pablo and his guide left the house at the same hour as before; but as the sky was overcast and a disagreeable breeze was blowing that threatened to turn into a gale, they resolved that their walk should not be a long one. Crossing the common meadow of Aldeacorba, they followed the great embankment of the mines toward the west with the intention of descending to the diggings.

“Nela, I must tell you of something that will make you leap for joy,” said the blind youth when they were far from the house. “Nela, I feel such gladness in my heart!... It seems to me as though the universe, all the sciences, history, philosophy, Nature, all that I have learned, had entered within me and were marching through my soul... like a solemn pageant. You saw those gentlemen who were waiting for me yesterday....”

“Don Carlos and his brother, the one we met the other night.”

“Who is a famous scholar, and has traveled all through America performing wondrous cures.... He has come to visit his brother.... As Don Carlos is so good a friend of my father, he begged him to examine me.... How kind and gentle he is! First he talked with me; he asked me various questions and told me many witty and amusing anecdotes. Then he told me to keep still: I felt his fingers on my eyelids.... After a long while he uttered a few words I could not understand: they were medical terms. My father has never read me anything on medicine. Then they led me to a window. While he was examining me with some instrument or other, what a silence there was in the room!... The doctor said afterwards to my father: ‘We will attempt it.’ They said other things in very low voices so that I could not hear, and I believe they spoke by signs as well. When they withdrew, my father said to me: ‘Son of my soul, I cannot conceal from you the joy that is within me. That man, that angel of God, has given me hope—very slender hope; but hope seems to cling the tighter the smaller it is. I try to cast it from me, telling myself it is impossible—no, no, well-nigh impossible; and yet it clings... like a limpet...’ So my father spoke to me. By his voice I knew he was weeping.... What are you doing, Nela? Are you dancing?”

“No, I am here beside you.”

“For usually you begin to dance as soon as I tell you good news.... But where are we going today?”

“The day looks threatening. Let us go toward La Trascava, which is a sheltered spot, and then we will go down to the Ship and La Terrible.”

“Very well, as you wish.... Ah, Nela, my companion, if it should be true, if God should have pity on me and grant me the happiness of seeing you!... Even if my sight lasted only for a single day, even if I became blind again the next, how thankful I should be to Him!”

Nela said nothing. After displaying intense excitement, she was now pensive, with her eyes fixed upon the ground.

“Very strange things happen in the world,” added Pablo, “and the mercy of God has... certain sudden outbursts, just like His wrath. They come unawares after long suffering and chastisement, just as anger appears after happiness that seemed secure and eternal, do you not think so?”

“Yes, what you hope for will come to pass,” said Nela with conviction.

“How do you know?”

“My heart tells me so.”

“Your heart tells you so! And why should not such promptings be true?” exclaimed Pablo with warmth. “Yes, chosen souls can in certain cases foresee an event. I have observed it in myself, for since sight does not distract me from examining myself, I have noticed that my spirit whispered incomprehensible things to me. Afterwards some event has come to pass, and I have said in amazement: ‘I knew something of this.’”

“The same thing happens to me,” replied Nela. “Yesterday you told me you loved me very much. When I went home, I was saying to myself: ‘It is a strange thing, but I knew something of this.’”

“It is marvelous, my dear child, how our souls are attuned. United by will, they lack but one bond. That bond they will have if I acquire the precious sense I lack. The idea of seeing never arises in my mind without my first cherishing the thought of loving you more. The acquisition of this sense means nothing to me but the gift of admiring in a new manner that which already causes me as much wonder as love.... But I fancy you are sad today.”

“Yes, I am... and if I must tell you the truth, I know not why.... I am very glad and very sad, both at the same time. The day is so gloomy today.... It would be better if there were no day, and it were always night.”

“No, no, leave it as it is. Night and day, if God wills that I should at last distinguish between you, how happy I shall be!... Why are we stopping?”

“We are in a dangerous spot. Let us step aside to take the path.”

“Ah, La Trascava! This slippery turf slopes right down until it is lost in the cavern. Whoever falls in can never get out again. Let us keep away, Nela; I do not like this place.”

“Silly boy, from here to the mouth of the cave is quite a distance. And how pretty it looks today!”

Nela, stopping and holding back her companion by the arm, gazed down into the mouth of the chasm, which opened in the ground like a funnel. Fine turf covered the slopes of that deep, concave crater. At the very bottom a great oblong boulder lay upon the grass amid weeds, fennel, briars, rushes, and a vast quantity of brightly colored wildflowers. It looked like a huge tongue. Beside it one guessed, rather than saw, a cavity, a swallow-hole concealed by dense thickets, like those Don Quixote had to hack through when he let himself down into the Cave of Montesinos.

Nela never tired of looking.

“Why do you say that dreadful Trascava looks pretty?” asked her friend.

“Because there are so many flowers in it. Last week they were all withered; but they have bloomed again, and it is a joy to look at. Mother of God! There are many birds perched down there and a great swarm of butterflies gathering honey from the flowers.... Choto, Choto, come here; do not scare the poor little birds.”

The dog, which had run down, came bounding back when called by Nela, and the peaceful republic of little birds took possession of their domain once more.

“This place fills me with horror,” said Pablo, taking the girl’s arm. “And now, shall we go toward the mines? Yes, I know this path. I am on my own ground. This way leads straight to the Ship.... Choto, run ahead; do not get tangled in my legs.”

They went down by a stepped pathway, and soon reached the hollow formed by the mining excavations. Leaving the green vegetable zone, they had entered abruptly into the geological zone—an immense trench whose walls, hewn with drill and pick, displayed an interesting stratification, whose various layers revealed in cross-section the most diverse hues and materials. This was the spot that had seemed to Teodoro Golfín like the interior of a great shipwrecked vessel gnawed by the waves, and its popular name justified the resemblance. But by daylight one admired chiefly the superposed strata, with their sulfurous and carbonated veins, their black sediments, their lignites in which jet lies embedded, their layers of ferruginous earth that looks kneaded with blood, and their great, regular slabs of rock shattered at a thousand points by human toil and bristling with peaks, fractures, and fissures. It looked like a wound torn in organic tissue and seen through a microscope. The stream of water saturated with iron oxide running down the center looked like a flow of blood.

“Where is our seat?” inquired young Penáguilas. “Let us go to it. The wind will not trouble us there.”

From the bottom of the great trench they climbed a little way up a rugged path opened among broken stones, earth, and clumps of fennel, and sat down in the shadow of a huge cracked boulder that displayed a long fissure in its center. Rather, it was two boulders joined together, with jagged edges like two worn jaws striving to bite.

“How pleasant it is here!” said Pablo. “Sometimes a draft of air comes out of that cave; but today I feel nothing. What one hears is the gurgling of the water deep inside the bowels of La Trascava.”

“It is very quiet today,” observed Nela. “Would you like to lie down?”

“A capital idea of yours. I did not sleep last night, thinking of what my father told me, of the doctor, of my eyes.... All night long I felt a hand reaching into my eyes and opening a closed, rusty door.”

Saying this, he laid his head upon Nela’s lap.

“That door,” he continued, “which was in the innermost depth of my sense, opened, as I told you, into a chamber where the thought that pursues me was shut up. Ah, Nela of my heart, beloved child, if God would but give me that sense I lack!... With it I should deem myself the happiest of men—I, who am already almost happy merely having you for the friend and companion of my life. For the two of us to become one, very little is wanting; I lack only to see you and delight in your beauty with that pleasure of sight which I cannot yet comprehend, but which I vaguely conceive. I have the curiosity of the spirit, but that of the eyes is denied me. I imagine it as a new way of loving you. I am filled with your beauty; but there is something in it that does not yet belong to me.”

“Do you hear?” said Nela suddenly, showing interest in something far removed from what her friend was saying.

“What?”

“In there.... La Trascava!... It is speaking.”

“Superstitious girl! Water does not speak, dear Nela. What language can a jet of water know? Only two things speak, my child: the tongue and the conscience.”

“And La Trascava,” observed Nela, growing pale; “it is a murmur, a yes, yes, yes.... At times I hear my mother’s voice, saying quite clearly: ‘My child, how good it is down here!’”

“It is your imagination. The imagination speaks too; I forgot to mention it. Mine sometimes becomes so talkative that I have to bid it be silent. Its voice is shrill, hurried, intolerable; whereas that of conscience is grave, calm, and convincing, and what it says admits of no reply.”

“Now it seems to be weeping.... The voice is dying away little by little,” said Nela, listening intently.

Suddenly a slight gust of air blew from the cavern.

“Did you not notice that it gave a great sigh?... Now the voice is heard again; it speaks low, whispering in my ear very softly, very softly....”

“What does it say to you?”

“Nothing,” replied María abruptly after a pause. “You say it is nonsense. You must be right.”

“I will soon rid your head of those foolish thoughts,” said the blind youth, taking her hand. “We are to live together all our lives. O my God! If I am not to acquire the faculty of which Thou didst deprive me at birth, why hast Thou given me hope? Wretched should I be if I were not born again beneath the hands of Doctor Golfín! For that will be to be born anew. And what a birth! What a new life! My child, I swear by the idea of God that is within me—clear, evident, and unchangeable—that you and I shall never part by my will. I shall have eyes, Nela, I shall have eyes to feast upon your heavenly beauty, and then I will marry you. You shall be my beloved wife... the life of my life, the joy and the pride of my soul! Have you nothing to say to this?”

Nela pressed the young man’s handsome head against her breast. She tried to speak, but her emotion choked her.

“And if God does not see fit to grant me that gift,” added the blind youth, “neither then shall you leave me; you shall still be my wife, unless you shrink from wedding a blind man. No, no, my child, I will not lay so heavy a yoke upon you. You will find worthy men who will love you and make you happy. Your extraordinary goodness, your noble qualities, your charming beauty, which must captivate hearts and kindle the purest love in all who know you, ensure you a smiling future. I swear to you that I will love you as long as I live, blind or seeing, and that I am ready to swear before God a great, insatiable, eternal love. Have you nothing to say to me?”

“Yes; that I love you dearly, very dearly,” said Nela, bringing her face close to her friend’s. “But do not be so eager to see me. Perhaps I am not as pretty as you believe.”

As she said this, Nela had searched in her pocket and brought out a fragment of silvered glass, the blurred remnant of a false mirror broken in Señana’s house the week before. She looked into it; but owing to the smallness of the glass, she was forced to look at herself in parts, piece by piece—first an eye, then her forehead. Holding it further off, she was able to take in half her face. Alas, how sorrowful was the result of her scrutiny! She put away the little glass, and heavy tears welled from her eyes.

“Nela, a drop has fallen on my forehead. Is it raining?”

“Yes, my boy, I think it is raining,” said Nela, sobbing.