Tristana (19 page)

“Gentlemen,” he said, “this is a very sad business, very sad . . .”

And he could utter not another word more. Miquis went into the patient’s room and announced blithely, “Fair maiden, we are not all yet come . . . or, rather, I have come alone. Now let’s see how that pulse of yours is doing . . .”

Tristana turned deathly pale, fixing the doctor with a look that was at once fearful, childish, and pleading. To soothe her, Miquis assured her that he was confident of a complete and radical cure, that her excited state was merely the precursor to a clear and indubitable improvement, and that to calm her down, he was going to give her a little ether.

“It’s nothing, my dear, I just put a few drops of liquid on a handkerchief, let you breathe it in, and those rascally nerves will soon fall into line . . .”

She was not easy to deceive however. The poor young woman knew what his intentions were and, trying very hard to smile, she said, “You want to send me to sleep, don’t you? Fine. I look forward to experiencing that deep sleep, in the face of which all pain, however obstinate, is helpless. How nice. And what if I don’t wake up, what if I stay there?”

“What do you mean ‘stay there’? That would make us look very foolish,” said Augusto, just as Don Lope entered looking half dead with worry.

And turning their backs on the patient, they set about preparing the drug, placing on a sideboard the small bottle of precious anesthetic. The doctor made a little nest of his handkerchief and in it placed the balls of cotton wool impregnated with chloroform, and the room filled up with a strong smell of apples.

“What a lovely smell!” said Tristana, closing her eyes, as if in silent prayer.

And Augusto immediately placed the handkerchief over her nose. An initial somnolence was succeeded by anxiety, an epileptic restlessness, convulsions, and uncontrollable, incomprehensible chatter, rather as if she were drunk.

“I don’t want it, I don’t . . . It doesn’t hurt anymore. Why cut it off? There I was playing one of Beethoven’s sonatas and playing it really well, sitting at the piano, when one of those rude fellows comes along and pinches me on the leg! Let them slice away, let them cut it off . . . and I’ll keep on playing. The piano holds no secrets for me . . . I am Beethoven, his heart, his body, although my hands are my own. Don’t let them take my hands from me too, because then . . . I won’t let them have this hand; I’ll hold on to it with the other one so that they can’t take it . . . and hold on to the other one with this, that way they won’t be able to take either of them. You’re no gentleman, Miquis, you never have been, you don’t even know how to treat a lady, still less an eminent artist . . . I wouldn’t want Horacio to come and see me like this. He’ll get the wrong idea. If Señó Juan was here, he would never allow such a crime to be committed . . . Tying up a poor woman and placing such a big stone on her chest, so big . . . and then filling up her palette with ashes so that she can’t paint . . . How extraordinary! How strong they smell, these flowers I painted! I painted them, so how is it that now they are alive? The power of artistic genius! I’ll have to retouch that Velázquez painting of
The Spinners
and see if I can improve it. Perfection, devilish perfection, where are you? Saturna, Saturna . . . come quickly, I’m suffocating. The perfume from those flowers . . . No, no, it’s the painting that smells, the prettier the flowers, the more poisonous . . .”

At last she was still, her mouth half open, her pupils motionless. Now and then, she would utter a childish moan, a timid protest from the person crushed beneath the stone slab of that brutal sleep. Before the chloroforming was done, two more executioners, for that was how Don Lope thought of them, came into the room, and as soon as they felt the patient was ready, they placed her on a bed covered by a mat made for the purpose and, without losing a second, they set about their sad labors. Don Lope gritted his teeth, and every now and then, unable to bear the pitiful scene, he would go off to his own room only to return at once, ashamed of his cowardice. He saw them apply the Esmarch bandage—a piece of rubber resembling a snake. Then they began cutting into the chosen incision point; and when they pared away the flap of skin that would be used later on to make the stump, when Don Lope saw the first blood spilled as the diligent scalpel sliced in, his cowardice became proud, stoical, unbending valor. His heart turned once more to bronze, his face to parchment, and he remained valiantly present until the end of that cruel operation, carried out with consummate skill and swiftness by the three doctors. An hour and a half after the chloroform was administered, Saturna rushed from the room carrying a long, narrow object wrapped in a sheet. Shortly afterwards, with the arteries ligatured, the skin sewn onto the stump, and after the painstaking, careful application of antiseptic, Señorita Reluz began her slow, sad awakening, her new life, her resurrection after that simulacrum of death, leaving her foot and two-thirds of her leg in the depths of that apple-scented tomb.

“AH, IT
still hurts!” Those were the first words she spoke when she returned from the dark abyss. And then her pale, distraught features revealed a profound process of self-analysis, similar to the intense effort of observation that the fearful direct toward their own organs, listening to their breathing and the flow of their blood, mentally feeling their muscles, and eavesdropping on every tremor of their nerves. The poor girl was doubtless focusing all her mental energies on the empty space where her leg had been, in order to replace the lost limb and restore it to how it was before the illness, healthy and vigorous and agile. It was easy enough to imagine that she still had both her legs and was walking elegantly along with the quick, light pace that would carry her in a trice to Horacio’s studio.

“How are you, my child?” asked Don Lope, stroking her.

And touching the white hair of that faded gallant, she answered playfully, “Very well. I feel quite rested. If you let me, I would break into a run right now . . . well, perhaps not a run. That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

When the others had left, Augusto and Don Lope assured her that the cure would be complete and congratulated themselves on a surgical success with an enthusiasm they quite failed to communicate to her. They lifted her carefully onto her bed, with an eye to both comfort and hygiene, and then there was nothing more to be done but wait for the next ten or fifteen critical days.

During that time, Don Lope did not have a moment’s peace, because although the wound seemed to be healing well, Tristana sank into an alarming state of dejection and prostration. She did not seem at all the same person, as if she were repudiating her old self; not once did she think of writing a letter or speak of the sublime aspirations or desires that rose up in her ever restless and ambitious spirit; nor did she come out with witty comments and jokes as she had even during the cruelest hours of her illness. Made glum and dull, her brilliant talent suffered a total eclipse. At first, Don Lope enjoyed this new passivity and meekness but soon came to regret her change of character. Like a solicitous father, he never left her side, his fondness and affection sometimes bordering on the cloying. Finally, on the tenth day, Miquis declared that the healing process was progressing precisely as he had hoped and that the invalid would soon be up and about. This coincided with a sudden resurrection of her spirits and, one morning, displeased with herself, she said to Don Lope, “Goodness, I haven’t written a letter in days. How rude of me!”

“There’s no hurry, my child,” the old gallant replied drily. “No ideal and perfect being would be annoyed simply because he hadn’t received a letter; he would console himself for being forgotten by strolling, undaunted, about the ethereal regions in which he lives. But if you want to write, here are your tools. I’ll be your secretary. You can dictate your letter to me.”

“No, I’ll write it myself. Or, if you like, you could write. Just a few words.”

“Right, start dictating,” said Don Lope, pen in hand and paper at the ready.

“As I was telling you,” said Tristana, “I have only one leg now. I’m better though. It doesn’t hurt anymore . . . I suffer very little . . . That will do.”

“Aren’t you going to continue?”

“I’d best write it myself. I can’t think when I’m dictating.”

“Here you are, then. You write what you like.” And he gave her the pen and set before her the tray with the blotter and the writing paper. “What? Nothing to say? Where has all that inspiration gone, all those bright ideas?”

“I’m so dull. My head’s completely empty.”

“Shall I dictate to you, then? How about this: ‘How handsome you are and what a rascal God made you and how . . .
unpleasant
such perfection is! No, I won’t marry you or any other terrestrial or celestial seraph . . .’ What are you laughing at? Come on. ‘I will not marry . . . Lame or not, that is none of your business. I have someone who loves me just as I am now, and for whom I am worth more with one leg than I was before with two. For your information, I should also tell you that I have since sprouted wings. My papa is going to bring me all the implements I need in order to paint, what’s more, he will buy me an organ and find me a teacher so that I can learn to play good music. You’ll see, compared to me, the angels of heaven will seem mere buskers.’ ”

They both burst out laughing and, cheered by his success, Don Lope continued harping on the same theme, until Tristana had to bring the conversation to an abrupt close, saying very seriously, “No, really, I’ll write to him . . . on my own.”

Don Lope left her alone for a moment, and Tristana wrote her letter, which was brief and heartfelt.

“Lord of my soul: Tristana is not what she was. Will you still love me just as much? My heart tells me that you will. You seem so much farther off to me than you ever did before, more beautiful, more inspired, more generous, more considerate. Can I come to you with the wooden leg I think they will give me? Won’t I look lovely! Goodbye. Don’t come and see me. I will adore you from afar, I will raise you up in your absence. You are my God and, like God, invisible. Your very grandeur removes you from my sight . . . although with the eyes of my soul I can see you clearly enough. Goodbye for now.”

She herself sealed the letter and stuck on the stamp before handing the envelope to Saturna, who smiled slightly mockingly as she took it. In the afternoon, when they were alone for a moment, the maid spoke openly.

“I didn’t want to say anything this morning because Don Lepe was with you. I didn’t send the letter. After all, why put it in the post when Don Horacio is here in Madrid? I’ll deliver it to him personally this evening.”

When she heard this, Tristana turned first white and then scarlet. She didn’t know what to say; not a thought came into her mind.

“You’re mistaken,” she said at last. “You must have seen someone who looks like him.”

“How could I possibly not know him! What an idea! It was him. We talked for more than half an hour. He was determined that I should tell him everything, point by point. You should have seen him, miss! He’s as black as my shoe. He says he’s been spending all his time either up in the hills or down by the sea, and that it’s really beautiful there, really lovely. Anyway, I told him everything, and the poor man, because he loves you so much, didn’t take his eyes off me for a minute all the while I was talking. He’s says he’ll speak to Don Lope and put things straight with him.”

“Put what straight?”

“He’ll know what to say. He’s dying to see you. We’ll have to arrange it when the master goes out . . .”

Tristana said nothing. A moment later, she asked Saturna to bring her a mirror and when she saw herself in it, she grew extremely distressed.

“You’re not so very disfigured,” said Saturna.

“Oh, please, I look like death. Awful . . .” And she burst into tears. “He won’t recognize me. My skin is the color of brown paper! And how big my eyes have grown. And that mouth! Saturna, take the mirror away and don’t give it back to me even if I ask you to.”

Contrary to his own desires, which would have kept him tied to the house, Don Lope was often obliged to leave, driven by necessity, which, in those sad circumstances, filled his existence with bitterness and anxiety. The vast expense incurred by the young woman’s illness had eaten up the miserable remnants of his already exhausted fortune, and there were days, alas, when the noble gentleman had to do violence to his own sensibilities and go entirely against his nature, knocking at the door of some friend with requests that seemed to him utterly ignominious. How the unhappy gentleman suffered is beyond description. In a matter of a few days, he aged five years. “Who would have thought it . . . good God, me, Lope Garrido, having to descend to . . . Me, with my pride and my punctiliousness about safeguarding my dignity, lowering myself to ask certain favors! And the day will come when insolvency will oblige me to ask for money I will not be able to repay . . . God knows I only bear such shame and degradation in order to sustain my poor girl and bring her joy. Otherwise, I would put a bullet through my brain and be done with it, dispatching my soul to the next world and my weary bones to the grave. Death before shame . . . But circumstances dictate the very opposite—a life stripped of dignity. I would never have believed it. And then people say that character . . . but I don’t believe in character. There are only facts, accidents. The lives of others provide the mold for our own life and the pattern for our actions.”

In Tristana’s presence, poor Don Lepe concealed these terrible woes, and even allowed himself to pretend that his situation could not have been more flourishing. He not only bought her the equipment she needed for her painting (two paint boxes—one for oils and the other for watercolors—brushes, easels, and the rest); he also bought her the organ and harmonium he had promised, so that she could amuse herself with music when her painting permitted. Tristana had received sufficient piano tuition at school to be able to fumble her way through some polkas and waltzes and a few other easy pieces. It was a little late now to acquire the kind of skill that only early application and hard work can bring; however, with a good teacher, she could overcome certain difficulties, and besides, the organ did not require such rapid finger work. She was more excited about music than about painting and longed to be able to get out of bed and try her skills. She would learn to manage the pedals with just one foot. While she waited with feverish impatience for the teacher announced by Don Lope, she could hear in her head the instrument’s sweet harmonies, albeit less lovely and heartfelt than those playing in the depths of her soul. She believed that she was called to become a remarkable performer, a concert artist of the first order, and this idea cheered her and gave her many hours of happiness. Garrido took pains to encourage that ambitious hope and, meanwhile, reminded her of her earlier attempts at drawing, urging her to put brush to canvas or board and reproduce some lovely subject copied from nature.