The Joy of Captain Ribot

by Armando Palacio Valdés

The next day and the days thereafter, without his honorable company but with that of Matilde and the eldest of his children, we made our excursions to Cabañal.

Martí and Castell's carriages took us thither directly after breakfast, and brought us to the city at sunset. This time was spent chatting on the upper balcony of the summer-house while the ladies embroidered or sewed, or we went out into the park, where we played like children with balls or hoops.

Sometimes we left the place and ran about the village or went down on the beach, where we were greatly entertained by watching the fishing boats coming in; at other times we directed our footsteps into the country, visited some of the cottages, usually that of a certain Tonet, an old servant of Martí's, who owned the little farm where he lived. There we often rested, and his wife welcomed us with chocolates or peanuts or served us some other refreshment.

But the important business of the afternoon was the picnic, or rather its preparation. For it interested us that the picnic was spread and eaten in the open air. We carried the alcohol stove and the rest of the things to some distant and shady place in the park. The ladies put on their aprons; the gentlemen, in shirt-sleeves, made chocolate or coffee, or fried fish that we had just bought on the beach, and passed a happy time. How happy I was when the party gave me the task of stewing up some sailor's dish, and I went about among my scullions and scullionesses with the stewpan in my hands, despotically giving them exact orders and sometimes—who would believe it?—going so far as to forget that I was in love!

Yet I was more and more in love all the time; there is no doubt about that. Neither when I said to Cristina in an imperious tone, "Bring me the salt!" nor, when I reproved her sharply for cutting the fish up into too small pieces, did it even enter my imagination that a more perfect creature could ever have existed under the sun. In the country the supercilious severity that I had often remarked in her disappeared. Her mood was gay, changeful, lively, and she invented a thousand tricks to make us laugh, while from her lips witticisms flowed continuously. She was the soul of our excursions, the salt that seasoned them.

I could not keep my eyes away from her. I listened to her and stared at her like an idiot. Sometimes, though not often, she made me feel that I was carrying water in a sieve. For example, one afternoon, standing in the summer-house, she showed us a thimble that she had bought. Everybody examined it, and I also after the others, then I contrived to keep it without being noticed. A good while passed; nothing more was said about the thimble. But when we left the mirador to go to our picnic she crossed in front of me and said without looking at me:

"Put the thimble in this little basket."

It was of no use to be cunning and crafty with her. She saw everything; she observed everything.

Another afternoon, when her sister-in-law Matilde was playing on the piano and she standing turning the leaves of her music, I stole up silently from behind. Pretending to find myself enraptured by the music and looking closely at its sheets, I devoured with my eyes her alabaster neck and the fine, soft hair, there where the black locks of her head seemed to die away and be lost like exquisite music that melts in pianissimo. Well, then as if she had eyes for seeing what was behind her, she raised her hand to the neck of her dress and pulled it up with a gesture of impatience. It was an admonition and a reprimand. But in spite of her dumb rebuffs and reproofs and although she used seldom to look at me, I felt myself happy beside her. And this was because in these rebuffs and in the sternness of her countenance I found no distaste for myself, nor desire to mortify me. Everything emanated from a noble, if exaggerated, sentiment of dignity, without counting the intense affection that she professed for her husband, of which she constantly gave clear proof. Nor in this either was she unworthy the exquisite delicacy of her sentiments. Instead of showing herself tender and submissive towards him as so many women would have done in her case, she shunned showing any fondness in my presence and, whenever it was possible, avoided the caresses that he would have given her. Sometimes he laughingly asked her the reason for such severity, but she remained inflexible.

Of her sense of justice and the instinct that inspired it she gave witness more than once, although it was always tacit. I had gone to the house one morning. There was no one in the dining-room but herself and her mother. She happened to ask for a glass of water. I took it upon myself to anticipate the servant, went to the sideboard, took a goblet and a little tray, and was about to pour out the water and serve her when she interrupted me dryly: