Felipe Alfau - Chromos

“You know that is impossible, you know that very well.” He was truly frightened.

“You are right and you cannot blame him, should he find out what has been going on under his roof. But perhaps I could talk to him without telling him everything. He might send Trini away. That would help.”

“No, that won’t help. That will kill me. I’ll blow my brains out. Oh, Ledesma! You have always been so good to me and Julieta. You have been almost a second father. That is why I came to you. You are my only hope, please, please!”

But Ledesma argued and persuaded and for once advised. He was by far the stronger character of the two and in the end he had Fernando under control, or so he thought. The latter promised to try his best and even yielded to the suggestion of a short trip to the north, but when he left, Ledesma was no longer very confident.

That night when Ledesma was closing the store, he locked the safe as usual and then stood before it. He knew Fernando had a key to the safe and one to the store, but the safe had an extra lock that was never used and to which only Ledesma and Don Mariano had a key.

Ledesma stood before the closed safe with lowered head. He reached for the other key and then shuddered and rushed out: “He wouldn’t have asked me — he wouldn’t have asked me.”

The next day the thing had happened which all Madrid knew so soon and Señor Sandoval stood before Ledesma with a crumpled note in his trembling hand: “You knew it, Ledesma, and you did not warn me.”

“Sir, you know how I loved the boy,” and Ledesma looked away because he knew he was about to lie. “I never suspected that your son. ”

“Don’t say it, Ledesma. I can understand more than is apparent, my good Ledesma,” and Don Mariano embraced him tightly as if seeking protection from some invisible foe. The thing had happened which cast the first cloud of disgrace upon the Sandoval family.

Fernando and Trini went to the Argentine. They wanted to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the scene of their delinquency. They remained in Buenos Aires for some time, spending freely what Fernando had stolen from his father.

Trim’s vulgarity had influenced Fernando more than his pseudo-refinement had influenced her. One must rise, men say, and experience teaches that to rise is difficult. Does this not prove that one should descend? Fernando did. He and Trini always sought the company of the lower classes and felt more at home with them.

They frequented the cafés in the arrabales. Trini had a habit of looking at people, and especially men, in a provocative and insolent way which for a moment angered Fernando and then acted as an added attraction.

In the café to which this particular case refers, there was a dark gentleman with high cheekbones and the manner of a professional procurer who had been examining her for a long time. He spoke to some friends and said something impertinent about her.

Fernando was excited with the atmosphere of the place which invited braggadocio. He addressed the man loudly and called him a lousy Indian.

The man walked over and very politely promised to perforate his guts and the trouble began.

Fernando, without giving the man time to accomplish his threat, smashed a heavy bottle on his head and the man fell bleeding like a stuck pig.

The place was in an uproar and it was all Fernando and Trini could do to escape with their clothes torn. Fernando was sure he had killed the man and so that night they packed the few things they had and left Buenos Aires for a village in the interior.

It was a painful and sad trip. They quarreled all the time. They had reached that stage.

“It was all your fault for looking at the man the way you did, you cheap. ”

“I had not even noticed the man.”

“You had not, eh? I’d like to see the man you don’t notice, you. ” He held her in his arms and kissed her mouth, biting the thick lips.

“How you hurt, mi negro.”

And they went on quarreling more fiercely than before.

They arrived at the village which was in an appallingly primitive state and they took a sordid-looking dismantled house, isolated from the rest. It stood at the end of a plaza in the middle of which was a fountain, and at the end where the house stood, it was walled by thick woods.

The whole village seemed to be submerged in the immense forest. Every street ended in the same impenetrable mass of green, except the one through which they had come and another one, both fading like snakes into the woods. It was like a great nest sunken forever in the jungle.

They remained there too some time and felt horribly lonesome. The villagers were hostile. They knew no one.

Their quarreling had assumed fearful proportions. They lived like two caged beasts, blaming each other for their misfortune, until once, after a particularly ugly scene and as they sat silently in that gloomy house, Trini spoke the first calm words in a long time:

“Fernando, why should we behave like enemies when we are so alone? We are so forsaken. We have nothing but each other. Let us be friendly and make this thing more bearable. I am afraid.”

And for the first time Fernando embraced Trini with tenderness, a deep tenderness exempt from any other feeling, and he realized that they were irrevocably bound.

Then an epidemic broke out in the village and, with the difficulty of obtaining help from the outside, it took a terrible toll. People died like roaches everywhere. They fell where they were struck and died there without help. The epidemic gained headway and there was not a single house where candlelight did not burn at night while some person mourned and kept watch over a corpse.

People migrated from the village until after some time there were more dead than alive. Fernando and Trini did not dare to go out into the wild country. They had no more chance to survive there than in the pestilent village; they knew not what to do and felt like trapped rats awaiting their doom. They dared not leave the house, imagining that the hideous disease respected windows and doors — as if it were not in the very walls, in the very air, in the sun itself which penetrated through the dusty windowpanes like a pale, clammy, insidious thing.

The streets were deserted, the houses full of corpses and the vultures had descended upon the dead village. Every time a cart went by carrying some of the dead into the wilderness, a flock of the hungry birds mobbed it and a gruesome battle ensued between the almost crazed cart driver and the horrible birds, and the man lashed away at the vultures and lashed furiously at the horses, the funereal load bouncing and diving into the woods, among a cloud of dust and a cloud of maddening birds.

The vultures had descended upon the dead village. Every night they alighted on the roofs and windowsills and screeched long and lugubriously, begging for the abundant flesh, until Trini almost went mad with horror and clung to Fernando:

“I am going crazy, I am losing my mind with these accursed birds. They seem to be calling me. I know I will be next. Drive them away!”

Then Fernando staggered to the windows like an enraged drunkard and pounded and cursed the vultures as if they were men.

It was under these adverse circumstances that Trini gave premature birth to a boy whom they named Enrique. Without a single skilled person’s help, only with the clumsy aid of Fernando whose nerves could not hold out much longer and who went to pieces during the delivery, the child was miraculously born.

Their fears were redoubled. Trini, who was a strong believer, was in panic: “The poor little angel. He will die without baptism.”

“If you believe at all, you cannot think your God that bad. This thing has not got us yet. It will not get us,” Fernando cried stupidly.