Selected Writings (Dario, Ruben) (30 page)

And so he did. At one end of his workshop he made a small space with screens adorned with rice paddies and cranes. Yellow was the predominant hue—the color’s entire gamut: gold, fire, Oriental ochre, autumn leaf, even the pale yellow that dies into white. At the center, on a gold and black pedestal, laughing, stood the exotic empress. Recaredo surrounded her with all his Eastern curiosities and he sheltered her beneath a large Nipponese parasol painted with camellias and widespread blood-red roses. It was so droll that one might almost laugh, to see the dreamy artist leave his pipe and his chisel and come to stand before the empress, his hands crossed over his chest, to bow as the Chinese do. Once, twice, ten, twenty times he would visit her. It was a passion. Upon a lacquer plate from Yokohama he would lay fresh flowers every day. Sometimes he would be seized with bliss before the Oriental statuette whose delightful, immobile majesty so moved him. He would study the monarch’s tiniest details, the whorl of her ear, the arch of her lip, her polished nose, the epicanthus of her eyelid. An idol, was this empress! Suzette would call him from afar:

“Recaredo!”

“Coming, my love!”

Yet he would continue in rapturous contemplation of the work of art. Until Suzette came to take him away, in a flurry of kisses.

One day, the flowers in the lacquer tray disappeared as though by magic.

“Who took the flowers away?” shouted the artist from his workshop.

“I did,” came the vibrant trill.

And Suzette, all pink and smiling, her black eyes flashing, pulled back a curtain to peek.

 

In the depths of his brain, Recaredo the sculptor said to himself:

“What the devil’s got into my little wife?” She hardly ate. Those lovely books, their pages deflowered by her ivory letter-opener, lay unopened on the little black side table, pining for her soft pink hands and warm fragrant lap. She seemed to Recaredo sad. “I wonder what the devil’s got into my wife?” At table, she refused to eat. She was serious—so serious! He would look at her out of the corner of his eye, and he would see those dark pupils wet, as though she were about to cry. And when she answered him, it was like a child that one has refused a bonbon. “Here, here, what’s got into my little wife, eh?”—Nothing. And that “Nothing” would be spoken in a tone of grief, and between the two syllables there would be tears.

Oh, Recaredo! What’s got into your little wife is that you are an abominable, hateful man. Have you not noticed that since the empress of China arrived at your house, the little azure drawing room has turned sad, and the blackbird no longer sings, no longer laughs its pearly laughter? Suzette wakens Chopin, and slowly draws from the echoing black piano the pale, wan, sickly, melancholy song. She is jealous, Recaredo! She is sick with jealousy, which suffocates and burns her like a fiery serpent squeezing the life out of her soul. Jealous! And perhaps he understood that, because one afternoon he spoke these words to the darling of his heart, face to face, through the steam from a cup of coffee:

“You are too unfair, my love. Do I not love you with all my heart? Do you not read in my eyes what is in my soul?”

Suzette broke into tears. He
loved
her? No, no, he did not love her. The sweet, radiant hours had all flown, and the kisses, too, like birds in flight. He did not love her anymore. And what was more, he had left her—her in whom he saw his very religion, his delight, his dream, his queen, his Suzette (for those were the names he had for her)—for that other woman!

Another woman?! Recaredo leapt back, startled. She was most terribly mistaken. Was she saying this about golden-haired Eulogia, for whom he had once, long ago, written madrigals?

She shook her head: No. . . . Then did she think it was that filthy rich Gabriela, with long black hair, and skin as white as alabaster—whose bust he had done? Or Luisa, who loved to dance, Luisa with her wasplike waist, the bosom of a wet nurse, and incendiary eyes? Or the young widow Andrea, who when she laughed stuck her red feline tongue out between her gleaming ivory teeth?

No, no, it was none of those.—Recaredo was utterly perplexed, then.

“Listen to me, child, tell me the truth—who is it? You know how I adore you. My Elsa, my Juliet, my soul, my love . . .”

So much true love trembled in those halting, almost sobbing words that Suzette, with red eyes (though now dry of tears), stood up straight and tall and raised her heraldic head.

“Do you love me?”

“You know I do!”

“Then let me avenge myself on my rival. Choose, Recaredo—her or me. If it is true that you adore me, will you allow me to put her forever out of your life, so that I alone may know your passion?”

“Yes, whatever you say, my love,” Recaredo answered. And seeing his jealous, stubborn little bird go out of the room, he sat sipping at his coffee, which was as black as ink.

He had not taken three sips when he heard a great crash. The noise came from his workshop.

He hurried there. And what did his astonished eyes behold? The statue had disappeared from its black and gold pedestal, and among diminutive fallen Mandarins and dangling fans, pieces of porcelain lay scattered across the floor; they crunched and cracked under Suzette’s little feet—for flushed, and laughing silvery laughter, awaiting his kisses, her hair loose about her neck and shoulders, she stood among the ruins.

“I am avenged! The empress of China is dead to you now forever!”

And when the ardent reconciliation of their lips began, in the little azure drawing room all filled now with joy and mirth and happiness, the blackbird, in its cage, almost laughed itself to death.

JUAN BUENO’S LOSSES

This is the story of a fellow called Juan Bueno—“Johnny Good-fellow,” you see. People called him that because from the time he was a boy, when someone would give him a smack on one side of the head, he would turn his cheek for another. His schoolmates would take away his candies and cakes, strip him almost naked in the street, and when he got home, his parents, one on one side, one on the other, would pinch him and slap him until his ears rang. And so he grew up, until he became a man. How this poor Juan suffered! He got smallpox, but he didn’t die, though his face was left looking as though a dozen hens had been pecking at it. He was sent to jail in the place of another Juan—Juan Lanas. And he suffered all this with such patience that all the townspeople, when they said
“There goes Juan Bueno!”
would laugh out loud.

And then the day came when this fellow got married.

 

One morning St. Joseph, in excellent humor, with his halo of glory upon his head, a new cloak upon his back, bright new sandals upon his feet, and his long flowering staff to aid him, went out for a walk through the village in which Juan Bueno lived and suffered. Christmas night was near, and St. Joseph was thinking about his baby, Jesus, and the preparations for his birth; he strolled along blessing the good believers and from time to time softly humming some carol or another. As he was walking along one street he heard a great racket, and much moaning and lamenting, and he found—oh, grievous sight!—Juan Bueno’s wife,
bam, bam, bam
, giving her wretched spouse what-for.

“Halt!” called out the putative father of the divine Savior. “I’ll have no such rows in my presence!”

Just that short and sweet. The fierce Gorgon grew calmer, the couple made their peace, and when Juan told his tale of woe good St. Joseph consoled him, gave him a pat or two on the back, and as he bade him good night, he said to him:

“It will all be all right, my son. Soon your troubles will be over. In the meantime, I’ll help you as much as I can. You know, with whatever comes along. You can find me in the parish church, the altar to the right. So long, now.”

 

Happy as could be, was good Juan Bueno at these tidings. And it may well be imagined that he went off, day after day, almost hour after hour, to visit the shoulder he knew he could cry on. —Lord, this has happened! Lord, this other! Lord, can you imagine what’s happened now! He asked for everything, and everything was granted. Well, not quite everything, because he was too embarrassed to tell the saint that his tyrant of a wife had not lost the habit of boxing his ears. So when St. Joseph would ask him, “What’s that bump on your head there?” he would laugh and change the subject. But St. Joseph knew very well . . . and he admired Juan’s forbearance.

One day Juan came in terribly sad and downcast.

“I’ve lost,” he moaned, “a bag of silver I’d put away. Could you find it for me?”

“Well, that’s really St. Anthony’s job, but we’ll see what we can do.”

And indeed when Juan returned to his house, he found the little bag of silver.

Another day Juan came in with his face all swollen and one eye practically falling out of its socket.

“The cow you gave me has disappeared!”

And the kind saint replied:

“Go home, you’ll find it.”

And another time:

“The mule you were so kind as to give me has run off!”

And the saint replied:

“Now, now, off home with you, the mule will come back.”

And so on, for many months.

Until one day the saint was not in the cheeriest of moods, and Juan Bueno came in with his face looking like an overripe tomato and his head all squashed out of shape. When the good saint saw him, he went, “Hm, hm.”

“Lord, I come to ask another favor of you. My wife has left me, and since you are so good . . .”

St. Joseph’s patience with Juan Bueno had reached its limit. He lifted his flowering staff and smacked Juan Bueno on the very top of his head, at a spot exactly between his ears.

“To hell with you—where you’ll find her for yourself, you blockhead!”

FEBEA

Febea is Nero’s panther.

Softly domestic, like an enormous royal house cat, she sprawls beside the neurotic Caesar, who caresses her with the delicate, androgynous hand of a cruel and corrupt emperor.

She yawns, and as she does, her flexible, wet tongue appears between her two rows of teeth—sharp, white teeth. She feeds on human flesh, and in the mansion of the sinister demigod of decadent Rome she is accustomed to seeing three red things at all time: roses, the imperial crimson, and blood.

One day, Nero brings into his presence Leticia, a snowy-skinned young virgin, the daughter of a Christian family. Leticia, fifteen, has the loveliest face, the most adorable little pink hands, divine azure eyes, the body of an ephebe about to be transformed into woman—worthy of a triumphant chorus of hexameters in one of Ovid’s metamorphoses.

Nero has been seized by a whim for this woman: he desires to possess her through his art, his music, and his poetry. The maiden—mute, unmoved, serene in her white chasteness—listens to the song sung by the formidable
imperator,
who accompanies himself on his lyre, and when he, the artist on the throne, concludes his erotic hymn (rhymed according to the rules of his great master Seneca), he sees that his captive, the virgin of his lustful whimsy, remains mute and innocent, like a lily, like a modest marble vestal.

At that, the great Caesar, filled with disdain, calls Febea and points an imperial finger at the victim of his vengeance. The powerful, proud panther stretches languidly, showing her sharp, gleaming claws, and she slowly yawns, her massive jaws gaping, and then, shaking off her stupor, her tail swings slowly, from side to side.

But then a remarkable thing occurs; the beast speaks the following words to the emperor:

“Oh, admirable and potent Emperor, thy will is that of an immortal; thy aspect is that of Jupiter; thy broad forehead is crowned with the glorious laurel—but I beg that today you allow me to inform you of two things: my fangs will never act against a woman such as this, who scatters splendors like a star; and thy verses, dactyls, and pyrrhics are truly abominable.”

FUGITIVE

Pale as a wax candle, or a sickly rose. Her hair is dark, her eyes ringed with azure circles, the signs of hectic labor and the disillusionment of so many dreams now vanished. . . . Poor girl!

Her name is Emma. She married the tenor of the company, when she was very young. When her puberty bloomed, sending forth the splendid aurora of a triumphant flower, he committed her to the boards. She started out among the “extras,” and she received the false kisses of the feigning lovers in the comedy. Did she love her husband? She did not quite know, herself. Constant quarrels; inexplicable rivalries from those women that Daudet might have limned; a struggle for life in a harsh, mendacious field—the field in which the garlands of one-night flowers bloom, and the rose of fleeting glory: bitter hours, half-erased, perhaps, by moments of mad revelry. The first child, the first artistic disappointment. The prince of the golden storybooks who never came! And, in a word, the outlook for a rocky road ahead, with no glimpse of a smiling future.

 

Sometimes she was pensive, inward. On the night of the performance she is a queen, a princess, the dauphin, or a fairy. But under the vermilion lies paleness and melancholy. The spectator sees an admirable, firm form, lustrous dark curls, a bosom swelling in harmonious curves; what he does not see is constant worry, unwavering thought, the sadness of a woman in the disguise of an actress.

She is gay for one minute, completely happy for one second. But desperation, hopelessness lies in the depths of that delicate, sweet soul. Poor thing! What does she dream of? I couldn’t say. Her looks would deceive the best observer. Do her thoughts go out to the unknown country they travel to tomorrow, to the contract she has been promised, to her children’s bread? Now the butterfly of love, the breath of Psyche will never visit that languid lily; now the prince of the golden storybooks will never come—she is sure, at least of that: he will never come!

 

Oh, you flame almost extinguished, bird lost in the wide human forest! You will go far, far away, you will pass like a quick vision, and you will never know that there has been a dreamer near you, who has thought of you and written a page in your memory—a dreamer in love, perhaps, with that waxen pallor, that melancholy, the enchantment of that sickly face, with
you,
in a word, dove of Bohemia, who knows not which of the four winds will blow beneath your wings tomorrow!