Maria (GB English)

–How could you have imagined such a thing? -She has only seen your friend twice, once when he was here for a few hours, and once when we went to visit his family.

–But, dear me, there is little time left for what I have thought to be justified or to vanish. It seems to me to be well worth waiting for.

–You are very unjust, and you will regret having been so. Mary, out of dignity and duty, knowing herself better than you do, conceals how much your conduct is making her suffer. I can hardly believe my eyes; I am astonished to hear what you have just said; I, who thought to give you a great joy, and to remedy all by letting you know what Mayn told us yesterday at parting!

–Say it, say it," I begged, sitting up.

–What's the point?

–Won't she always be… won't she always be my sister?

–Or can a man be a gentleman and do what you do? No, no; that is not for a son of mine to do! Your sister! And you forget that you are saying it to one who knows you better than you know yourself! Your sister! And I know that she has loved you ever since she slept you both on my knee! And it is now that you believe it? now that I came to speak to you about it, frightened by the suffering that the poor thing tries uselessly to conceal from me.

–I would not, for one instant, give you cause for such a displeasure as you let me know. Tell me what I am to do to remedy what you have found reprehensible in my conduct.

–Don't you want me to love her as much as I love you?

–Yes, ma'am; and it is, isn't it?

–It will be so, though I had forgotten that she has no mother but me, and Solomon's recommendations, and the confidence he thought me worthy; for she deserves it, and loves you so much. The doctor assures us that Mary's malady is not the one that Sara suffered.

–Did he say so?

–Yes; your father, reassured on that score, wanted me to let you know.

–So can I go back to being with her as I was before? -I asked in a maddened way.

–Almost…

–Oh, she will excuse me; don't you think so? The doctor said there was no danger of any kind? -I added; "it is necessary that Charles should know it.

My mother looked at me strangely before answering me:

–And why should it be concealed from him? It is my duty to tell you what I think you must do, since the gentlemen of M*** are to come to-morrow, as they announce. Tell Maria this afternoon. But what can you tell her that would be sufficient to justify your detachment, without disregarding your father's orders? And even if you could speak to her of what he demanded of you, you could not excuse yourself, for there is a cause for doing what you have done these days, which for pride and delicacy's sake you must not discover. That is the result. I must tell Mary the real cause of your sorrow.

–But if you do, if I have been light in believing what I have believed, what will she think of me?

–He will think you less ill, than to consider yourself capable of a fickleness and inconsistency more odious than anything else.

–You are right up to a certain point; but I beg you will not tell Maria anything of what we have just spoken of. I have made a mistake, which has perhaps made me suffer more than her, and I must remedy it; I promise you I will remedy it; I demand only two days to do it properly.

–Well," he said, getting up to leave, "are you going out today?

–Yes, ma'am.

–Where are you going?

I am going to pay Emigdio his welcome visit; and it is indispensable, for I sent word to him yesterday with his father's butler to expect me to lunch to-day.

–But you'll be back early.

–At four or five o'clock.

–Come and eat here.

–Are you satisfied with me again?

–Of course not," he replied, smiling. Till the evening, then: you will give the ladies my best regards, from me and the girls.

Chapter XVIII

I was ready to go, when Emma came into my room. She was surprised to see me with a laughing countenance.

–Where are you going so happy," he asked me.

–I wish I didn't have to go anywhere. To see Emigdio, who complains of my inconstancy in every tone, whenever I meet him.

–How unfair! -he exclaimed with a laugh. Unfair you?

–What are you laughing at?

–Poor thing!

–No, no: you're laughing at something else.

–That's just it," said he, taking a comb from my bath-table, and coming up to me. Let me comb your hair for you, for you know, Mr. Constant, that one of your friend's sisters is a pretty girl. Pity," she continued, combing the hair with the help of her graceful hands, "that Master Ephraim has grown a little pale these days, for the bugueñas can't imagine manly beauty without fresh colours on their cheeks. But if Emigdio's sister were aware of....

–You are very talkative today.

–Yes? and you're very cheerful. Look in the mirror and tell me if you don't look good.

–What a visit! -I exclaimed, hearing Maria's voice calling my sister.

–Really. How much better it would be to go for a stroll along the peaks of the boquerón de Amaime and enjoy the… great and solitary landscape, or to walk through the mountains like wounded cattle, shooing away mosquitoes, without prejudice to the fact that May is full of nuches…, poor thing, it is impossible.

–Maria is calling you," I interrupted.

–I know what it's for.

–What for?

–To help him do something he shouldn't do.

–Can you tell which one?

–She is waiting for me to go and fetch flowers to replace these," said she, pointing to those in the vase on my table; "and if I were her, I should not put another one in there.

–If you only knew…

–And if you knew…

My father, who was calling me from his room, interrupted the conversation, which, if continued, could have frustrated what I had been trying to do since my last interview with my mother.

As I entered my father's room, he was looking at the window of a beautiful pocket watch, and he said:

–It is an admirable thing; it is undoubtedly worth the thirty pounds. Turning at once to me, he added:

–This is the watch I ordered from London; look at it.

–It's much better than the one you use," I observed, examining it.

–But the one I use is very accurate, and yours is very small: you must give it to one of the girls and take this one for yourself.

Without leaving me time to thank him, he added:

–Are you going to Emigdio's house? Tell his father that I can prepare the guinea-pasture for us to fatten together; but that his cattle must be ready on the fifteenth of the next.

I immediately returned to my room to take my pistols. Mary, from the garden, at the foot of my window, was handing Emma a bunch of montenegros, marjoram, and carnations; but the most beautiful of these, for their size and luxuriance, was on her lips.

–Good morning, Maria," I said, hurrying to receive the flowers.

She, paling instantly, returned the greeting curtly, and the carnation fell from her mouth. She handed me the flowers, dropping some at my feet, which she picked up and placed within my reach when her cheeks were again flushed.

–Do you want to exchange all these for the carnation you had on your lips," I said as I received the last ones?

–I stepped on it," he replied, lowering his head to look for it.

–Thus trodden, I will give you all these for him.

He remained in the same attitude without answering me.

–Do you allow me to pick it up?

He then bent down to take it and handed it to me without looking at me.

Meanwhile Emma pretended to be completely distracted by the new flowers.

I shook Mary's hand with which I was handing over the desired carnation, saying to her:

–Thank you, thank you! See you this afternoon.

She raised her eyes to look at me with the most rapturous expression that tenderness and modesty, reproach and tears, can produce in a woman's eyes.

Chapter XIX

I had walked a little more than a league, and was already struggling to open the door that gave access to the mangones of Emigdio's father's hacienda. Having overcome the resistance of the mouldy hinges and shaft, and the even more tenacious resistance of the pylon, made of a large stone, which, suspended from the roof with a bolt, gave torment to passers-by by keeping that singular device closed, I considered myself fortunate not to have got stuck in the stony mire, the respectable age of which was known by the colour of the stagnant water.

I crossed a short plain where the fox-tail, the scrub-plate and the bramble dominated over the marshy grasses; there some shaven-tailed milling-horse browsed, colts scampered and old donkeys meditated, so lacerated and mutilated by the carrying of firewood and the cruelty of their muleteers, that Buffon would have been perplexed to have to classify them.

The large, old house, surrounded by coconut and mango trees, had an ashen, sagging roof overlooking the tall, dense cocoa grove.

I had not exhausted the obstacles to get there, for I stumbled into the corrals surrounded by tetillal; and there I had to roll the sturdy guaduas over the rickety steps. Two blacks came to my aid, a man and a woman: he was dressed in nothing but breeches, showing his athletic back shining with the peculiar sweat of his race; she was wearing a blue fula and for a shirt a handkerchief knotted at the nape of her neck and tied with the waistband, which covered her chest. They both wore reed hats, the kind that soon turn straw-coloured with little use.

The laughing, smoking pair were going to do no less than have it out with another pair of colts whose turn had already come in the flail; and I knew why, for I was struck by the sight not only of the black, but also of his companion, armed with lassoed paddles. They were shouting and running when I alighted under the wing of the house, disregarding the threats of two inhospitable dogs that were lying under the seats of the corridor.

A few frayed reed harnesses and saddles mounted on the railings were enough to convince me that all the plans made in Bogotá by Emigdio, impressed by my criticisms, had been dashed against what he called his father's shanties. On the other hand, the breeding of small livestock had improved considerably, as was shown by the goats of various colours that stank up the courtyard; and I saw the same improvement in the poultry, for many peacocks greeted my arrival with alarming cries, and among the Creole or marsh ducks, which swam in the neighbouring ditch, some of the so-called Chileans were distinguished by their circumspect demeanour.

Emigdio was an excellent boy. A year before my return to Cauca, his father sent him to Bogota in order to set him, as the good gentleman said, on his way to become a merchant and a good trader. Carlos, who lived with me at the time and was always in the know even about what he wasn't supposed to know, came across Emigdio, I don't know where, and planted him in front of me one Sunday morning, preceding him as he entered our room to say: "Man, I'm going to kill you with pleasure: I've brought you the most beautiful thing.

I ran to embrace Emigdio, who, standing at the door, had the strangest figure imaginable. It is foolish to pretend to describe him.

My countryman had come laden with the hat with the coffee-with-milk-coloured hair that his father, Don Ignacio, had worn in the holy weeks of his youth. Whether it was too tight, or whether he thought it was good to wear it like that, the thing formed a ninety-degree angle with the back of our friend's long, rangy neck. That skinny frame; those thinning, lank sideburns, matching the most disconsolate hair in its neglect ever seen; that yellowish complexion peeling the sunny roadside; the collar of the shirt tucked hopelessly under the lapels of a white waistcoat whose tips hated each other; the arms imprisoned in the collars of the shirt; the arms pinned in the collars of the shirt; the arms pinned in the collars of the shirt; the arms pinned in the collars of the shirt; the arms pinned in the collars of the shirt; the arms caught in the sleeves of a blue coat; the chambray breeches with wide cordovan loops, and the boots of polished deer-hide, were more than enough to excite Charles's enthusiasm.

Emigdio was carrying a pair of big-eared spurs in one hand and a bulky parcel for me in the other. I hastened to unburden him of everything, taking an instant to look sternly at Carlos, who, lying on one of the beds in our bedchamber, was biting a pillow, crying his eyes out, which almost caused me the most unwelcome embarrassment.

I offered Emigdio a seat in the little sitting-room; and as he chose a spring sofa, the poor fellow, feeling that he was sinking, tried his best to find something to hold on to in the air; but, having lost all hope, he pulled himself together as best he could, and when he was on his feet, he said:

–What the hell! This Carlos can't even come to his senses, and now! No wonder he was laughing in the street about the sticking he was going to do to me. And you too? Well, if these people here are the same devils. What do you think of the one they did to me today?

Carlos came out of the room, taking advantage of this happy occasion, and we were both able to laugh at our ease.

–What Emigdio! -said he to our visitor, "sit down in this chair, which has no trap. It is necessary that you should keep a leash.

–Yes," replied Emigdio, sitting down suspiciously, as if he feared another failure.

–What have they done to you? -he laughed more than Carlos asked.

–Have you seen? I was about not to tell them.

–But why? -insisted the implacable Carlos, throwing an arm round his shoulders, "tell us.

Emigdio was angry at last, and we could hardly content him. A few glasses of wine and some cigars ratified our armistice. As for the wine, our countryman remarked that the orange wine made in Buga was better, and the green anisete from the Paporrina sale. The cigars from Ambalema seemed to him inferior to the ones he carried in his pockets, stuffed in dried banana leaves and perfumed with chopped fig and orange leaves.

After two days, our Telemachus was now suitably dressed and groomed by Master Hilary; and though his fashionable clothes made him uncomfortable, and his new boots made him look like a candlestick, he had to submit, stimulated by vanity and by Charles, to what he called a martyrdom.

Once settled in the house where we lived, he amused us in the after-dinner hours by telling our landladies about the adventures of his journey and giving his opinion about everything that had attracted your attention in the city. In the street it was different, for we were obliged to leave him to his own devices, that is, to the jovial impertinence of the saddlers and hawkers, who ran to besiege him as soon as they saw him, to offer him Chocontana chairs, arretrancas, zamarros, braces and a thousand trinkets.

Fortunately, Emigdio had already finished all his shopping when he came to find out that the daughter of the lady of the house, an easy-going, carefree, laughing girl, was dying for him.

Charles, without stopping at bars, succeeded in convincing him that Micaelina had hitherto disdained the courtships of all the diners; but the devil, who does not sleep, made Emigdio surprise his kid and his beloved one night in the dining-room, when they thought the wretch asleep, for it was ten o'clock, the hour at which he was usually in his third sleep; a habit which he justified by always getting up early, even if he was shivering with cold.

When Emigdio saw what he had seen and heard what he had heard, which, if only he had seen and heard nothing for his and our peace of mind, he thought only of speeding up his march.

As he had no complaint against me, he confided in me the night before the journey, telling me, among many other unburdenings:

In Bogotá there are no ladies: these are all… seven-soled flirts. When this one has done it, what do you expect? I'm even afraid I won't say goodbye to her. There's nothing like the girls of our land; here there's nothing but danger. You see Carlos: he's a corpus altar, he goes to bed at eleven o'clock at night, and he's more full of himself than ever. Let him be; I'll let Don Chomo know so that he can put the ashes on him. I admire to see you thinking only of your studies.

So Emigdio departed, and with him the amusement of Carlos and Micaelina.

Such, in short, was the honourable and friendly friend whom I was going to visit.

Expecting to see him coming from inside the house, I gave way to the rear, hearing him shouting at me as he jumped over a fence into the courtyard:

–At last, you fool! I thought you'd left me waiting for you. Sit down, I'm coming. And he began to wash his hands, which were bloody, in the ditch in the courtyard.

–What were you doing? -I asked him after our greetings.

–As today is slaughter day, and my father got up early to go to the paddocks, I was rationing the blacks, which is a chore; but I'm not busy now. My mother is very anxious to see you; I'm going to let her know you're here. Who knows if we'll get the girls to come out, because they've become more closed-minded every day.

–Choto! he shouted; and soon a half-naked little black man, cute sultanas, and a dry, scarred arm, appeared.

–Take that horse to the canoe and clean the sorrel colt for me.

And turning to me, having noticed my horse, he added:

–Carrizo with the retinto!

–How did that boy's arm break down like that? -I asked.

–They're so rough, they're so rough! He's only good for looking after the horses.

Soon they began to serve lunch, while I was with Doña Andrea, Emigdio's mother, who almost left her kerchief without fringes, for a quarter of an hour we were alone talking.

Emigdio went to put on a white jacket to sit down at the table; but first he presented us with a black woman adorned with a Pastuzean cape with a handkerchief, wearing a beautifully embroidered towel hanging from one of her arms.

The dining room served as our dining room, whose furnishings were reduced to old cowhide couches, some altarpieces representing saints from Quito, hung high up on the not very white walls, and two small tables decorated with fruit bowls and plaster parrots.

The truth be told, there was no greatness at lunch, but Emigdio's mother and sisters were known to understand how to arrange it. The tortilla soup flavoured with fresh herbs from the garden; the fried plantains, shredded meat and cornmeal doughnuts; the excellent local chocolate; the stone cheese; the milk bread and the water served in big old silver jugs, left nothing to be desired.

When we were having lunch, I caught a glimpse of one of the girls peeping through a half-open door; and her cute little face, lit up by eyes as black as chambimbes, suggested that what she was hiding must be very much in harmony with what she was showing.

I said goodbye to Mrs. Andrea at eleven o'clock, because we had decided to go to see Don Ignacio in the paddocks where he was rodeoing, and to take advantage of the trip to take a bath in the Amaime.

Emigdio stripped off his jacket and replaced it with a threaded ruana; he took off his sock boots to put on worn-out espadrilles; he fastened some white tights of hairy goat skin; he put on a big Suaza hat with a white percale cover, and mounted the sorrel, first taking the precaution of blindfolding him with a handkerchief. As the colt curled up into a ball and hid his tail between his legs, the rider shouted at him: "You're coming with your trickery!" immediately unloading two resounding lashes with the Palmiran manatee he was wielding. So, after two or three corcovos, which did not even move the gentleman in his Chocontan saddle, I mounted and we set off.

As we reached the site of the rodeo, distant from the house more than half a league, my companion, after he had taken advantage of the first apparent flat to turn and scratch the horse, entered into a tug-of-war conversation with me. He unpacked all he knew about the matrimonial pretensions of Carlos, with whom he had resumed friendship since they met again in the Cauca.

–What do you say? -he ended up asking me.

I slyly dodged an answer; and he went on:

–What's the use of denying it? Charles is a working lad: once he is convinced that he can't be a planter unless he lays aside his gloves and umbrella first, he must do well. He still makes fun of me for lassoing, and making a fence, and barbequing mule; but he's got to do the same or go bust. Haven't you seen him?

–No.

–Do you think he doesn't go to the river to bathe when the sun is strong, and if they don't saddle his horse he won't ride, just so he won't get a tan and get his hands dirty? As for the rest, he's a gentleman, that's for sure: it wasn't eight days ago that he got me out of a jam by lending me two hundred patacones that I needed to buy some heifers. He knows he doesn't let it go to waste; but that's what you call serving in time. As for his marriage… I'll tell you one thing, if you offer not to scorch yourself.

–Say, man, say what you want.

–In your house they seem to live with a great deal of tone; and it seems to me that one of those little girls brought up among soots, like the ones in fairy tales, needs to be treated like a blessed thing.

He laughed and continued:

–I say that because that Don Jerónimo, Carlos's father, has more shells than a siete-cueros, and he's as tough as a chili pepper. My father can't see him since he's got him involved in a land dispute and I don't know what else. The day he finds him, at night we have to put some yerba mora ointment on him and give him a rub of aguardiente with malambo.

We had arrived at the rodeo site. In the middle of the corral, in the shade of a guásimo tree and through the dust raised by the moving bulls, I discovered Don Ignacio, who approached me to greet me. He was riding a pink and coarse quarter horse, harnessed with a tortoiseshell whose lustre and decay proclaimed his merits. The meagre figure of the rich owner was decorated as follows: shabby lion's pauldrons with uppers; silver spurs with buckles; an unplacked jacket of cloth and a white ruana overloaded with starch; crowning it all was an enormous Jipijapa hat, the kind they call when the wearer gallops: Under its shadow, Don Ignacio's big nose and small blue eyes played the same game as in the head of a stuffed paletón, the garnets that he wears for pupils and the long beak.

I told Don Ignacio what my father had told me about the cattle they were to fatten together.

–He replied, "It's all right," he said, "You can see that the heifers can't get any better: they all look like towers. Don't you want to come in and have some fun?

Emigdio's eyes were going wild watching the cowboys at work in the corral.

–Ah tuso! -he shouted; "beware of loosening the pial.... To the tail! To the tail!

I excused myself to Don Ignacio, thanking him at the same time; he continued:

–Nothing, nothing; the Bogotanos are afraid of the sun and the fierce bulls; that's why the boys are spoiled in the schools there. Don't let me lie to you, that pretty boy, son of Don Chomo: at seven o'clock in the morning I met him on the road, bundled up with a scarf, so that only one eye was visible, and with an umbrella!.... You, as far as I can see, don't even use such things.

At that moment, the cowboy shouted, with the red-hot brand in his hand, applying it to the paddle of several bulls lying and tied up in the corral: "Another… another".... Each of these shouts was followed by a bellow, and Don Ignacio would use his penknife to make one more notch on a guasimo stick that served as a foete.

As the cattle could be dangerous when they got up, Don Ignacio, after having received my farewell, got to safety by going into a neighbouring corral.

Emigdio's chosen spot on the river was the best place to enjoy the bathing that the waters of the Amaime offer in the summer, especially at the time we reached its banks.

Guabos churimos, on whose flowers fluttered thousands of emeralds, offered us dense shade and cushioned leaf litter where we spread out our ruanas. At the bottom of the deep pool that lay at our feet, even the smallest pebbles were visible and silver sardines frolicked. Down below, on the stones that were not covered by the currents, blue herons and white egrets fished peeping or combed their plumage. On the beach in front, beautiful cows were lying on the beach; macaws hidden in the foliage of the cachimbo trees were chattering in a low voice; and lying on the high branches, a group of monkeys slept in lazy abandonment. The cicadas were everywhere resounding their monotonous songs. A curious squirrel or two peeped through the reeds and disappeared swiftly. Further into the jungle we heard from time to time the melancholy trill of the chilacoas.