Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) Part 2

When the _Triton_ occasionally appeared in Valencia, thrifty Dona Cristina was obliged to modify the dietary of her family. This man ate nothing but fish, and her soul of an economical housewife worried greatly at the thought of the extraordinarily high price that fish brings in a port of exportation.

Life in that house, where everything always jogged along so uniformly, was greatly upset by the presence of the doctor. A little after daybreak, just when its inhabitants were usually enjoying the dessert of their night's sleep, hearing drowsily the rumble of the early morning carts and the bell-ringing of the first Ma.s.ses, the house would reecho to the rude banging of doors and heavy footsteps making the stairway creak. It was the _Triton_ rus.h.i.+ng out on the street, incapable of remaining between four walls after the first streak of light. Following the currents of the early morning life, he would reach the market, stopping before the flower stands where were the most numerous gatherings of women.

The eyes of the women turned toward him instinctively with an expression of interest and fear. Some blushed as he pa.s.sed by, imagining against their will what an embrace from this hideous and restless Colossus must be.

"He is capable of crus.h.i.+ng a flea on his arm," the sailors of his village used to boast when trying to emphasize the hardness of his biceps. His body lacked fat, and under his swarthy skin bulged great, rigid and protruding muscles--an Herculean texture from which had been eliminated every element incapable of producing strength. Labarta found in him a great resemblance to the marine divinities. He was Neptune before his head had silvered, or Poseidon as the primitive Greek poets had seen him with hair black and curly, features tanned by the salt air, and with a ringleted beard whose two spiral ends seemed formed by the dripping of the water of the sea. The nose somewhat flattened by a blow received in his youth, and the little eyes, oblique and tenacious, gave to his countenance an expression of Asiatic ferocity, but this impression melted away when his mouth parted in a smile, showing his even, glistening teeth, the teeth of a man of the sea accustomed to live upon salt food.

During the first few days of his visit he would wander through the streets wavering and bewildered. He was afraid of the carriages; the patter of the pa.s.sers-by on the pavements annoyed him; he, who had seen the most important ports of both hemispheres, complained of the bustle in the capital of a province. Finally he would instinctively take the road from the harbor in search of the sea, his eternal friend, the first to salute him every morning upon opening the door of his own home down there on the _Marina_.

On these excursions he would oftentimes be accompanied by his little nephew. The bustle on the docks,--(the creaking of the cranes, the dull rumble of the carts, the deafening cries of the freighters),--always had for him a certain music reminiscent of his youth when he was traveling as a doctor on a transatlantic steamer.

His eyes also received a caress from the past upon taking in the panorama of the port--steamers smoking, sailboats with their canvas spread out in the sunlight, bulwarks of orange crates, pyramids of onions, walls of sacks of rice and compact rows of wine casks paunch to paunch. And coming to meet the outgoing cargo were long lines of unloaded goods being lined up as they arrived--hills of coal coming from England, sacks of cereal from the Black Sea, dried codfish from Newfoundland sounding like parchment skins as they thudded down on the dock, impregnating the atmosphere with their salty dust, and yellow lumber from Norway that still held a perfume of the pine woods.

Oranges and onions fallen from the crates were rotting in the sun, scattering their sweet and acrid juices. The sparrows were hopping around the mountains of wheat, flitting timidly away when hearing approaching footsteps. Over the blue surface of the harbor waters the sea gulls of the Mediterranean, small, fine and white as doves, twined in and out in their interminable contra-dances.

The _Triton_ went on enumerating to his nephew the cla.s.s and specialty of every kind of vessel; and upon discovering that Ulysses was capable of confusing a brigantine with a frigate, he would roar in scandalized amazement.

"Heavens! Then what in the devil do they teach your in school?..."

Upon pa.s.sing near the citizens of Valencia seated on the wharves, fis.h.i.+ng rod in hand, he would shoot a glance of commiseration toward their empty baskets. Over there by his house on the coast, before the sun would be up, he would already have covered the bottom of his boat with enough to eat for a week. The misery of the cities!

Standing on the last points of the rocky ledge, his glance would sweep the immense plain, describing to his nephew the mysteries hidden beyond the horizon. At their left, beyond the blue mountains of Oropesa, which bound the Valencian gulf, he could see in imagination Barcelona, where he had numerous friends, Ma.r.s.eilles, that prolongation of the Orient fastened on the European coast, and Genoa with its terraced palaces on hills covered with gardens. Then his vision would lose itself on the horizon stretching out in front of him. That was the road of his happy youth.

Straight ahead in a direct line was Naples with its smoking mountain, its music and its swarthy dancing girls with hoop earrings; further on, the Isles of Greece; at the foot of an Aquatic Street, Constantinople; and still beyond, bordering the great liquid court of the Black Sea, a series of ports where the Argonauts--sunk in a seething ma.s.s of races, fondled by the felinism of slaves, the voluptuosity of the Orientals, and the avarice of the Jews--were fast forgetting their origin.

At their right was Africa; the Egyptian ports with their traditional corruption that at sunset was beginning to tremble and steam like a fetid mora.s.s; Alexandria in whose low coffee houses were imitation Oriental dancers with no more clothes than a pocket handkerchief, every woman of a different nation and shrieking in chorus all the languages of the earth....

The doctor withdrew his eyes from the sea in order to observe his flattened nose. He was recalling a night of Egyptian heat increased by the fumes of whiskey; the familiarity of the half-clad public women, the scuffle with some ruddy Northern sailors, the encounter in the dark which obliged him to flee with bleeding face to the s.h.i.+p that, fortunately, was weighing anchor at dawn. Like all Mediterranean men, he never went ash.o.r.e without wearing a dagger hidden on his person, and he had to "sting" with it in order to make way for himself.

"What times those were!" said the _Triton_ with more regret and homesickness than remorse; and then he would add by way of excuse, "Ay, but then I was only twenty-four years old!"

These memories made him turn his eyes toward a huge bluish bulk extending out into the sea and looking to the casual spectator like a great barren island. It was the promontory crowned by the Mongo, the great Ferrarian promontory of the ancient geographers, the furthest-reaching point of the peninsula in the lower Mediterranean that closes the Gulf of Valencia on the south.

It had the form of a hand whose digits were mountains, but lacked the thumb. The other four fingers extended out into the waves, forming the capes of San Antonio, San Martin, La Nao and Almoraira. In one of their coves was the _Triton's_ native village, and the home of the Ferraguts--hunters of black pirates in other days, contrabandists at times in modern days, sailors in all ages, appearing originally, perhaps, from those first wooden horses that came leaping over the foam seething around the promontory.

In that home in the _Marina_ he wished to live and die, with no further desire of seeing more lands, with that sudden immovability that attacks the vagabonds of the waves and makes them fix themselves upon a ledge of the coast like a mollusk or bunch of seaweed.

Soon the _Triton_ grew tired of these strolls to the harbor. The sea of Valencia was not a real sea for him. The waters of the river and of the irrigation ca.n.a.ls disturbed him. When it rained in the mountains of Aragon, an earthy liquid always discharged itself into the Gulf, tinting the waves with flesh color and the foam with yellow. Besides, it was impossible to indulge in his daily sport of swimming. One winter morning, when he began to undress himself on the beach, the crowd gathered around him as though attracted by a phenomenon. Even the fish of the Gulf had to him an insufferable slimy taste.

"I'm going back home," he would finally say to the notary and his wife.

"I can't understand how in the world you are able to live here!"

In one of these retreats to the _Marina_ he insisted upon taking Ulysses home with him. The summer season was beginning, the boy would be free from school for three months, and the notary, who was not able to go far away from the city, was going to pa.s.s the summer with his family on the beach at Caba.n.a.l checkered by bad-smelling irrigation ca.n.a.ls near a forlorn sea. The little fellow was looking very pale and weak on account of his studies and hectoring. His uncle would make him as strong and agile as a dolphin. And in spite of some very lively disputes, he succeeded in s.n.a.t.c.hing the child away from Dona Cristina.

The first things that Ulysses admired upon entering the doctor's home were the three frigates adorning the ceiling of the dining-room--three marvelous vessels in which there was not lacking a single sail nor pulley rope, nor anchor, and which might be made to sail over the sea at a moment's notice.

They were the work of his grandfather Ferragut. Wis.h.i.+ng to release his two sons from the marine service which had weighed upon the family for many centuries, he had sent them to the University of Valencia in order that they might become inland gentlemen. The older, Esteban, had scarcely terminated his career before he obtained a notarys.h.i.+p in Catalunia. The younger one, Antonio, became a doctor so as not to thwart the old man's wishes, but as soon as he acquired his degree he offered his services to a transatlantic steamer. His father had closed the door of the sea against him and he had entered by the window.

And so, as Ferragut Senior began to grow old, he lived completely alone. He used to look after his property--a few vineyards scattered along the coast in sight of his home--and was in frequent correspondence with his son, the notary. From time to time there came a letter from the younger one, his favorite, posted in remote countries that the old Mediterranean seaman knew only by hearsay. And during his long, dull hours in the shade of his arbor facing the blue and luminous sea, he used to entertain himself constructing these little models of boats. They were all frigates of great tonnage and fearless sail. Thus the old skipper would console himself for having commanded during his lifetime only heavy and clumsy merchant vessels like the s.h.i.+ps of other centuries, in which he used to carry wine from Cette or cargo prohibited in Gibraltar and the coast of Africa.

Ulysses was not long in recognizing the rare popularity enjoyed by his uncle, the doctor--a popularity composed of the most antagonistic elements. The people used to smile in speaking of him as though he were a little touched, yet they dared to indulge in these smiles only when at a safe distance, for he inspired a certain terror in all of them. At the same time they used to admire him as a local celebrity, for he had traversed all seas, and possessed, besides, a violent and tempestuous strength which was the terror and pride of his neighbors. The husky youths when testing the vigor of their fists, boxing with crews of the English vessels that came there for cargoes of raisins, used to evoke the doctor's name as a consolation in case of defeat. "If only the _Dotor_ could have been here!... Half a dozen Englishmen are nothing to him!"

There was no vigorous undertaking, however absurd it might be, that they would not believe him capable of. He used to inspire the faith of the miracle-working saints and audacious highway captains. On calm, suns.h.i.+ny winter mornings the people would often go running down to the beach, looking anxiously over the lonely sea. The veterans who were toasting themselves in the sun near the overturned boats, on scanning the broad horizon, would finally discern an almost imperceptible point, a grain of sand dancing capriciously on the waves.

They would all break into shouts and conjectures. It was a buoy, a piece of masthead, the drift from a distant s.h.i.+pwreck. For the women it was somebody drowned, so bloated that it was floating like a leather bottle, after having been many days in the water.

Suddenly the same supposition would arise in every perplexed mind. "I wonder if it could be the _Dotor!_" A long silence.... The bit of wood was taking the form of a head; the corpse was moving. Many could now perceive the bubble of foam around his chest that was advancing like the prow of a s.h.i.+p, and the vigorous strokes of his arms.... "Yes, it surely was the _Dotor!_"... The old sea dogs loaned their telescopes to one another in order to recognize his beard sunk in the water and his face, contracted by his efforts or expanded by his snortings.

And the _Dotor_ was soon treading the dry beach, naked and as serenely unashamed as a G.o.d, giving his hand to the men, while the women shrieked, lifting their ap.r.o.ns in front of one eye--terrified, yet admiring the dripping vision.

All the capes of the promontory challenged him to double them, swimming like a dolphin; he felt impelled to measure all the bays and coves with his arms, like a proprietor who distrusts another's measurements and rectifies them in order to affirm his right of possession. He was a human bark who, with the keel of his breast, cut the foam, whirling through the sunken rocks and the pacific waters in whose depths sparkled fishes among mother-of-pearl twigs and stars moving like flowers.

He used to seat himself to rest on the black rocks with overskirts of seaweed that raised or lowered their fringe at the caprice of the wave, awaiting the night and the chance vessel that might come to dash against them like a piece of bark. Like a marine reptile he had even penetrated certain caves of the coast, drowsy and glacial lakes illuminated by mysterious openings where the atmosphere is black and the water transparent, where the swimmer has a bust of ebony and legs of crystal. In the course of these swimming expeditions he ate all the living beings he encountered fastened to the rocks by antennas and arms. The friction of the great, terrified fish that fled, b.u.mping against him with the violence of a projectile, used to make him laugh.

In the night hours pa.s.sed before his grandfather's little s.h.i.+ps, Ulysses used to hear the _Triton_ speak of the _Peje Nicolao_, a man-fish of the Straits of Messina mentioned by Cervantes and other authors, who lived in the water maintaining himself by the donations from the s.h.i.+ps. His uncle must be some relative of this _Peje Nicolao_.

At other times this uncle would mention a certain Greek who in order to see his lady-love swam the h.e.l.lespont every night. And he, who used to know the Dardanelles, was longing to return there as a simple pa.s.senger merely that a poet named Lord Byron might not be the only one to imitate the legendary crossing.

The books that he kept in his home, the nautical charts fastened to the walls, the flasks and jars filled with the animal and vegetable life of the sea, and more than all this, his tastes which were so at variance with the customs of his neighbors, had given the _Triton_ the reputation of a mysterious sage, the fame of a wizard.

All those who were well and strong considered him crazy, but the moment that there was the slightest break in their health they would share the same faith as the poor women who oftentimes pa.s.sed long hours in the home of the _Dotor_, seeing his bark afar off and patiently awaiting his return from the sea, in order to show him the sick children they carried in their arms. He had an advantage over all other doctors, as he made no charge for his services; better still, many sick people came away from his house with money in their hands.

The _Dotor_ was rich--the richest man in the countryside; a man who really did not know what to do with his money. His maid-servant--an old woman who had known his father and served his mother--used daily to receive from his hands the fish provided for the two with a regal generosity. The _Triton_, who had hoisted sail at daybreak, used to disembark before eleven, and soon the purpling lobster was crackling on the red coals, sending forth delicious odors; the stew pot was bubbling away, thickening its broth with the succulent fat of the sea-scorpion; the oil in the frying pan was singing, browning the flame-colored skin of the salmonettes; and the sea urchins and the mussels opened hissing under his knife, were emptying their still living pulp into the boiling stew pan. Furthermore, a cow with full udders was mooing in the yard, and dozens of chickens with innumerable broods were cackling incessantly.

The flour kneaded and baked by his servant, and the coffee thick as mud, was all that the _Triton_ purchased with his money. If he hunted for a bottle of brandy on his return from a swim, it was only to use it in rubbing himself down.

Money entered through his doors once a year, when the girls of the vintage lined up among the trellises of his vineyards, cutting the bunches of little, close fruit and spreading them out to dry in some small sheds called _riurraus_. Thus was produced the small raisin preferred by the English for the making of their puddings. The sale was a sure thing, the boats always coming from the north to get the fruit.

And the _Triton_, upon finding five or six thousand pesetas in his hand, would be greatly perplexed, inwardly asking himself what a man was ever going to do with so much money.

"All this is yours," he said, showing the house to his nephew.

His also the boat, the books and the antique furniture in whose drawers the money was so openly hid that it invited attention.

In spite of seeing himself lord of all that surrounded him, a rough and affectionate despotism, kept nevertheless, weighing the child down. He was very far from his mother, that good lady who was always closing the windows near him and never letting him go out without tying his neckscarf around him with an accompaniment of kisses.

Just when he was sleeping soundest, believing that the night would still be many hours longer, he would feel himself awakened by a violent tugging at his leg. His uncle could not touch him in any other way.

"Get up, cabin boy!" In vain he would protest with the profound sleepiness of youth.... Was he, or was he not the "s.h.i.+p's cat" of the bark of which his uncle was the captain and only crew?...

His uncle's paws bared him to the blasts of salt air that were entering through the windows. The sea was dark and veiled by a light fog. The last stars were sparkling with twinkles of surprise, ready to flee. A crack began to appear on the leaden horizon, growing redder and redder every minute, like a wound through which the blood is flowing. The s.h.i.+p's cat was loaded up with various empty baskets, the skipper marching before him like a warrior of the waves, carrying the oars on his shoulders, his feet rapidly making hollows on the sand. Behind him the village was beginning to awaken and, over the dark waters, the sails of the fishermen, fleeing the inner sea, were slipping past like ghostly shrouds.

Two vigorous strokes of the oar sent their boat out from the little wharf of stones, and soon he was untying the sails from the gunwales and preparing the ropes. The unfurled canvas whistled and swelled in bellying whiteness. "There we are! Now for a run!"

The water was beginning to sing, slipping past both sides of the prow.

Between it and the edge of the sail could be seen a bit of black sea, and coming little by little over its line, a great red streak. The streak soon became a helmet, then a hemisphere, then an Arabian arch confined at the bottom, until finally it shot up out of the liquid ma.s.s as though it were a bomb sending forth flashes of flame. The ash-colored clouds became stained with blood and the large rocks of the coast began to sparkle like copper mirrors. As the last stars were extinguished, a swarm of fire-colored fishes came trailing along before the prow, forming a triangle with its point in the horizon. The mist on the mountain tops was taking on a rose color as though its whiteness were reflecting a submarine eruption. "_Bon dia!_" called the doctor to Ulysses, who was occupied in warming his hands stiffened by the wind.

And, moved with childlike joy by the dawn of a new day, the _Triton_ sent his ba.s.s voice booming across the maritime silence, several times intoning sentimental melodies that in his youth he had heard sung by a vaudeville prima donna dressed as a s.h.i.+p's boy, at other times caroling in Valencian the chanteys of the coast--fishermen's songs invented as they drew in their nets, in which most shameless words were flung together on the chance of making them rhyme. In certain windings of the coast the sail would be lowered, leaving the boat with no other motion than a gentle rocking around its anchor rope.

Upon seeing the s.p.a.ce which had been obscured by the shadow of the boat's hulk, Ulysses found the bottom of the sea so near that he almost believed that he could touch it with the point of his oar. The rocks were like gla.s.s. In their interstices and hollows the plants were moving like living creatures, and the little animals had the immovability of vegetables and stones. The boat appeared to be floating in the air and athwart the liquid atmosphere that wraps this abysmal world, the fish hooks were dangling, and a swarm of fishes was swimming and wriggling toward its encounter with death.