Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) Part 30

"She is going to see the doctor," thought Ferragut. "It is all over."

He regretted the loss of this woman, even after having seen her in her tragic and fleeting ugliness. At the same time, the injurious word, the cutting insults with which she had accompanied her departure caused sharp pain. He already was tired and sick of hearing himself called "meridional," as though it were a stigma.

Yet he rather relished his enforced happiness, the sensation of false liberty which every enamored person feels after a quarrelsome break.

"Now to live again!..." He wished to return at once to the s.h.i.+p, but feared a revival of the memories evoked by silence. It would be better to remain in Naples, to go to the theater, to trust to the luck of some chance encounter just as when he used to come ash.o.r.e for a few hours.

The next morning he would leave the hotel, with all his baggage, and before sunset he would be sailing the open sea.

He ate outside of the _albergo_, and he pa.s.sed the night elbowing women in cabarets where an insipid variety show served as a pretext to disguise the baser object. The recollection of Freya, fresh-looking and gay, kept rising between him and those painted mouths every time that they smiled upon him, trying to attract his attention.

At one o'clock in the morning he went up the hotel stairway, surprised at seeing a ray of light underneath the door of his room. He entered.... She was awaiting him--reading, tranquil and smiling. Her face, refreshed and retouched with juvenile color, did not show the slightest trace of the morning's spasmodic outbreak. She was clad in pyjamas.

Seeing Ulysses enter, she arose with outstretched arms.

"Tell me that you are not still angry with me!... Tell me that you will forgive me!... I was very naughty toward you this afternoon, I admit it."

She was embracing him, rubbing her mouth against his neck with a feline purr. Before the captain could respond she continued with a childish voice:

"My shark! My sea-wolf!--who has made me wait all these hours!... Swear to me that you have not been unfaithful!... I can perceive at once the trace of another woman."

Sniffing his beard and face, her mouth approached the sailor's.

"No, you have not been unfaithful.... I still find my own perfume....

Oh, Ulysses! My hero!..."

She kissed him with that absorbing kiss, which appeared to take all the life from him, obscuring his thoughts and annulling his will-power, making him tremble from head to foot. All was forgotten,--offenses, slights, plans of departure.... And, as usual, he fell, conquered by that vampire caress.

In the darkness he heard Freya's gentle voice. She was recapitulating what they had not said, but what the two were thinking of at the same time.

"The doctor believes that you ought to remain. Let your boat go with its hideous old faun, who is nothing but a drawback. You are to remain here, on land.... You will be able to do us a great favor.... You know you will; you will remain?... What happiness!"

Ferragut's destiny was to obey this idolized and dominating voice....

And the following morning Toni saw him approaching the vessel with an air of command which admitted no opposition. The _Mare Nostrum_ must set forth at once for Barcelona. He would entrust the command to his mate. He would join it just as soon as he could finish certain affairs that were detaining him in Naples.

Toni opened his eyes with a gesture of surprise. He wished to respond, but stood with his mouth open, not venturing to speak a single word....

This was his captain, and he was not going to permit any objections to his orders.

"Very well," he said finally. "I only ask you that you return as soon as possible to take up your command.... Do not forget what we are losing while the boat is tied up."

A few days after the departure of the steamer Ulysses radically changed his method of living.

Freya no longer wished to continue lodging in the hotel. Attacked by a sudden modesty, the curiosity and smiles of the tourists and servants were annoying her. Besides, she wished to enjoy complete liberty in her love affairs. Her friend, who was like a mother to her, would facilitate her desire. The two would live in her house.

Ferragut was greatly surprised to discover the extreme size of the apartment occupied by the doctor. Beyond her salon there was an endless number of rooms, somewhat dismantled and without furniture, a labyrinth of part.i.tioned walls and pa.s.sageways, in which the captain was always getting lost, and having to appeal to Freya for aid; all the doors of the stair-landings that appeared unrelated to the green screen of the office were so many other exits from the same dwelling.

The lovers were lodged in the extreme end, as though living in a separate house. One of the doors was for them only. They occupied a grand salon, rich in moldings and gildings and poor in furniture. Three armchairs, an old divan, a table littered with papers, toilet articles and eatables, and a rather narrow couch in one of the corners, were all the conveniences of this new establishment.

In the street it was hot, and yet they were s.h.i.+vering with cold in this magnificent room into which the sun's rays had never penetrated.

Ulysses attempted to make a fire on a hearth of colored marble, big as a monument, but he had to desist half-suffocated by the smoke. In order to reach the doctor's apartment they had to pa.s.s through a row of numberless connecting rooms, long since abandoned.

They lived as newly-wed people, in an amorous solitude, commenting with childish hilarity on the defects of their quarters and the thousand little inconveniences of material existence. Freya would prepare breakfast on a small alcohol stove, defending herself from her lover, who believed himself more skilled than she in culinary affairs. A sailor knows something of everything.

The mere suggestion of hunting a servant for their most common needs irritated the German maiden.

"Never!... Perhaps she might be a spy!"

And the word "spy" on her lips took on an expression of immense scorn.

The doctor was absent on frequent trips and Karl the employee in the study, was the one who received visitors. Sometimes he would pa.s.s through the row of deserted rooms in order to ask some information of Freya, and she would follow him out, deserting her lover for a few moments.

Left to himself, Ulysses would suddenly realize the dual nature of his personality. Then the man he was before that meeting in Pompeii would a.s.sert himself, and he would see his vessel and his home in Barcelona.

"What have you got yourself into?" he would ask himself remorsefully.

"How is all this affair ever going to turn out?..."

But at the sound of her footsteps in the next room, on perceiving the atmospheric wave produced by the displacement of her adorable body, this second person would fold itself back and a dark curtain would fall over his memory, leaving visible only the actual reality.

With the beatific smile of an opium-smoker, he would accept the impetuous caress of her lips, the entwining of her arms, strangling him like marble boas.

"Ulysses, my master!... The moments that separate me from you weigh upon me like centuries!"

He, on the other hand, had lost all notion of time. The days were all confused in his mind, and he had to keep asking in order to realize their pa.s.sing. After a week pa.s.sed in the doctor's home, he would sometimes suppose that the sweet sequestration had been but forty-eight hours long, at others that nearly a month had flitted by.

They went out very little. The mornings slipped away insensibly between the late awakening and preparations for a breakfast made by themselves.

If it was necessary to go after some eatable forgotten the day before, it was she who took charge of the expedition, wis.h.i.+ng to keep him from all contact with outside life.

The afternoons were afternoons of the harem, pa.s.sed upon the divan or stretched on the floor. In a low voice she would croon Oriental songs, incomprehensible and mysterious. Suddenly she would spring up impetuously like a spring that is unwound, like a serpent that uncoils itself, and would begin to dance, almost without moving her feet, waving her lithe limbs.... And he would smile with stupefied infatuation, extending a right hand toward an Arabian tabaret, covered with bottles.

Freya took even greater care of the supply of liquor than of things to eat. The sailor was half-drunk, but with a drunkenness wisely tempered that never went beyond the rose-colored period. But he was so happy!...

They dined outside the house. Sometimes their excursions were at midday and they would go to the restaurants of Posilipo or Vomero, the very places that he had known when he was a hopeless suppliant, and which saw him now with her hanging on his arm, with a proud air of possession. If nightfall surprised them, they would hastily betake themselves to a cafe in the interior of the city, a beer-garden whose proprietor always spoke to Freya in German in a low voice.

Whenever the doctor was in Naples she would seat herself at their table, with the air of a good mother who is receiving her daughter and son-in-law. Her scrutinizing gla.s.ses appeared to be searching Ferragut's very soul, as though doubtful of his fidelity. Then she would become more affectionate in the course of these banquets, composed of cold meats with a great abundance of drinks, in the German style. For her, love was the most beautiful thing in existence, and she could not look upon these two enamored ones without a mist of emotion blurring the crystals of her second eyes.

"Ah, Captain!... How much she loves you!... Do not disappoint her; obey her in every respect.... She adores you."

Frequently she returned from her trips in evident bad humor. Ulysses surmised that she had been in Rome. At other times she would appear very gay, with an ironic and tedious gayety. "The mandolin-strummers appear to be coming to their senses. Germany is constantly receiving more support from their ranks. In Rome the 'German propaganda' is distributed among millions."

One night emotion overcame her rugged sensibilities. She had brought back from her trip a portrait which she pressed lovingly against her vast bosom before showing it.

"Look at it," she said to the two. "It is the hero whose name brings tears of enthusiasm to all Germans.... What an honor for our family!"

Pride made her hasty, s.n.a.t.c.hing the photograph from Freya's hand in order to pa.s.s it on to Ulysses. He saw a naval official rather mature, surrounded by a numerous family. Two children with long blonde hair were seated on his knees. Five youngsters, chubby and tow-headed, appeared at his feet with crossed legs, lined up in the order of their ages. Near his shoulder extended a double line of brawny young girls with coronal braids imitating the coiffures of empresses and grand d.u.c.h.esses.... Behind these, proudly erect, was his virtuous and prolific companion, aged by too continuous maternity.

Ferragut contemplated this patriotic warrior very deliberately. He had the face of a kindly person with clear eyes and grayish, pointed beard.

He almost inspired a tender compa.s.sion by his overwhelming duties as a father.

Meanwhile the doctor's voice was chanting the glories of her relative.