LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

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

Скачать книгу