The Novel on the Tram

by Benito Pérez Galdós

"Madam, calm down. I'm very sorry."

"Yes. I understand everything now. That infamous man. I have a strong suspicion as to what he had in mind. Leave this instant. But it's already too late. I can already hear my husband's voice."

Indeed a deafening voice could be heard in the room next door and, after a short interval, the Count came in the room. He feigned surprise at seeing the gallant visitor and, subsequently laughing somewhat affectedly, spoke to him:

"Ah Rafael! You're here. Long time no see! You came to accompany
Antonia on the piano. You'll take tea with us."

The Countess and her spouse exchanged a meaningful glance. The young man in his perplexity hardly managed to return the Count's greeting. I saw them entering the living room and servants coming out to meet them. I saw that the servants were carrying tea things and afterwards they disappeared, leaving the three main characters alone.

Something terrible was going to happen.

They sat down. The Countess looked mortified. The Count affected a dazed hilarity like drunkenness and the young man spoke only in monosyllables. Tea was served and the Count passed to Rafael one of the cups, not just any cup, but one he'd singled out. The Countess looked at that cup so fearfully it seemed that her soul had left her body. They drank in silence ballasting the brew with a tasty assortment of Huntley and Palmers biscuits and other nibbles appropriate to this type of supper. Then the Count burst out laughing again with the outrageous and noisy demonstrativeness that was peculiar to him that night, and said:

"How bored we all are! You, Rafael, haven't said a word. Antonia, play something. We haven't heard you play for such a long time. This piece by Gorschack, for instance, entitled Death. You used to play it wonderfully. Come on. Sit down at the piano."

The Countess tried to speak, but could not say a word. The Count looked at her in such a way that the unhappy woman quailed before the terrible expression in his eyes like a dove hypnotized by a boa constrictor. She got up to go to the piano and again there the husband must have said something that terrified her even more, subjecting her to his devilish dominion. The piano sounded with several strings struck at once and, running from the low notes to the high notes, the lady's hands awoke in a second hundreds of sounds that were lying dormant in among the strings and hammers. At first the music was a confused mixture of sounds that stunned rather than pleased, but then that storm blew over and a funereal and timorous dirge like the Dies irae came out of such disorder. It seemed to me I heard the sad sound of a choir of Carthusians accompanied by the hoarse bellow of the bassoons. After could be heard pitiful sighs like those that we imagine souls exhale, condemned in purgatory to ceaselessly beg for a pardon that is a long time in coming.

Then came loud and extended arpeggios and the notes reared up as if arguing about which of them would could there first. Chords came together and broke up like the foam on waves which forms and is then effaced. The harmonies boiled and fluctuated in an endless heavy swell, fading into silence and then coming back more strongly in great and hasty eddies. I carried on entranced by the majestic and impressive music. I could not see the face of the countess, sat with her back to me, but I imagined it to be in such a state of bewilderment and fright that I started to think that the piano was playing itself. The young man was behind her, the count to her right, leaning on the piano. From time to time she raised her eyes to look at him, but she must have seen something dreadful in the eyes of her companion as she went back to lowering hers and kept on playing. Suddenly the piano stopped sounding and the Countess cried out.