A Wedding Trip

by condesa de Emilia Pardo Bazán

But even more than the bazar of objects of art, where so great a diversity of forms and colors, styles and artistic ideals, after all confused her, did one among the many stalls at the edge of the sidewalk near the Casino, interest Lucía. These stalls represented the modest and unpretending branches of trade. Here an old German cried his wares—glasses to drink the waters—engraving on them with an emery wheel the initials of the purchasers’ names in their presence; there a Swiss offered for sale toys, dolls, little boxes, and book folders carved in beech-wood by the shepherds; here lenses were sold, there combs and writing-materials. Lucía’s favorite stall was one presided over by a peddler of curiosities from Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Mother-of-pearl calvaries with simple carvings in relief, pen handles of olive-wood terminating in a cross, heads of the Virgin cut on shell, brooches and trinkets of enamel adorned with arabesques, cups of black bitumen, aromatic lozenges—such were the contents of the peddler’s box. All this was sold by an Israelite of not unpleasing appearance, with black eyes and yellow skin, wearing a dark red Arab fez and wide trousers, gentle, insinuating, a Levantine in everything, with a smattering of many languages and a good knowledge of Spanish, which, but for the use of an occasional archaism, he spoke like a native. In this man’s conversation Lucía found entertainment in the absence of other sources of interest. She would question him about the holy village of Bethlehem, the sacred house of Nazareth, Mount Olivet, and all the other holy places which she had pictured to herself as situated rather in some mysterious and remote paradise than on the earth. Between Lucía and the peddler there was thus established the habit of having a ten minutes chat every afternoon in the open air, which she enjoyed all the more when he told her that he was a Christian and a Catholic, catechized and instructed by the Franciscans of Bethlehem. Lucía bought specimens of all his wares, even to a rosary of those opaque greenish beads, called, not without some analogical similitude, Job’s tears.

“I don’t know how you can like that ugly rosary,” said Pilar.

“But just see,” exclaimed Lucía, “they look like real tears.”

But the swallow of the Levant, too, flew away in his turn, in search of milder climes. One day they did not find Ibrahan Antonio in his accustomed place; discouraged, perhaps, by a day without a sale, he had packed up his wares and departed, no one knew whither. Lucía missed him; but the retreat was a general one; on all sides, closed up and empty shops were to be seen. On the pavements were mountains of straw, piles of wrapping paper, packing cases and boxes bearing in large letters the word “fragile.” The gloom, the disorder, the ever-increasing bareness of a removal reigned. Pilar thought Vichy in this condition so unattractive that she planned excursions which should take her away from the principal streets. One morning she took a fancy to go to the pastry-cook’s shop and witnessed the manufacture of two or three thousand cakes and bonbons. On another morning she visited the subterranean galleries which contain the immense reservoirs of water and the enormous pipes that supply the baths of the thermal establishment. They descended a narrow staircase whose lowest steps were lost in the obscurity of the gallery. The keeper preceded them, carrying in her hand a miner’s flat-shaped lamp, which emitted a disagreeable odor. Miranda carried another lamp, and a little street urchin, who made his appearance among them as suddenly as if he had fallen down from the clouds, took charge of a third. The vaulted roof was so low that Miranda was obliged to stoop down in order to avoid striking his head against it. The narrow passage made an abrupt turn and they suddenly found themselves in another gallery, which received, as in a yawning mouth, the pipes that, owing to the perpetual dampness, were here covered with rust. From the roof exuded a fine white moisture that sparkled in the light; on either hand flowed a stream of water over a bed of residuum and alkaline phosphates, white and floury, like newly fallen snow. As they advanced further into the long subterranean gallery, a suffocating heat announced the passage of the overflow of the Grande Grille, the temperature of whose waters was still higher in this confined atmosphere than it was at its source. From the walls, covered with patches of mildew and limy scales, hung monstrous fungi, cryptogamous plants full of venom, whose noxious whiteness gleamed on the wall like a pale and sinister eye gleaming in a livid countenance. Dusty cobwebs shrouded the elbows of the pipes like gray winding-sheets shrouding forgotten corpses. Through the loose stones of the pavement could be caught glimpses of the black water below. They could hear plainly the steps of the people passing overhead, and the hard sound of the horses’ hoofs. At intervals there was an airhole, through the iron grating of which came the daylight, livid and sepulchral, imparting a yellow tinge to the red flame of the lamps. The pipes wound like intestines through the damp passage, now dragging themselves along the ground like gigantic serpents, now reaching upward to the roof, like the black tentacles of some enormous polypus. At one time they emerged from the corridors into a brighter spot—a species of circular cave with a skylight, in whose far end yawned the open mouth of the Lucas well, disclosing the still, somber, and unfathomable water within. The urchin held his lamp over the brink and looked down. The keeper seized him by the arm.

“Eh, my friend,” she said, “take care that you don’t fall in there. It would not be easy to go down a hundred yards, which is the depth of that hole, to look for you.”

Lucía, fascinated, approached the mouth of the well. The mephitic gases it exhaled made the smoky flames of the lamps flicker. Here the temperature was not warm, but cold—a dense, airless cold, which made breathing difficult. An iron door opened into another gallery, on entering which they all drew back in alarm, with the exception of the keeper, at finding themselves surrounded by a vast expanse of water, a sort of subterranean lake. They were standing on a narrow plank, thrown like a bridge across the reservoir. The water, lying in its stone tomb, had a stillness and limpidity that had something lugubrious in them. The flame of one of the lamps, that had been left on the opposite bank to show the extent of the deposit, threw long lines of wavering light over the gloomy transparence of the lake, and looked, in the distance, like the torch of a hired assassin in some Venetian prison. So fantastic was the aspect of this lake, overhung by a granite sky, that one might fancy it peopled with floating corpses. Lucía and Pilar experienced a vague terror, and like children, or rather, like women, they were especially horrified at the idea that in some one of the narrow and confused passages, they might stumble over a rat. They knew that the deposits of water communicated with the sewers, and two or three times already they had turned pale, fancying they had seen a black shadow pass by, which was only the wavering shadow of some parasites cast by the light of the lamps upon the wall. Suddenly both women uttered a cry; this time there was no room for doubt, they heard the sharp, shrill squeal of a rat. Lucía stood for an instant motionless, with dilated eyes; it was impossible here to run away. But the street urchin and the keeper burst out laughing; they were both familiar with the sound, which was produced by the corking of the bottles of mineral water on the other side of the wall. The two women breathed more freely, however, when they emerged from the gloomy labyrinth, and saw once more the light of day and felt the fresh air blowing across their perspiring brows.

One place only did Lucía visit unaccompanied—the church of St. Louis. At first the Leonese, accustomed to the grandeur of the superb basilica of her native place, was not greatly pleased with the edifice. St. Louis is a poor mediæval rhapsody conceived by a modern architect; the interior is disfigured by being painted in tawdry colors; in a word, it resembles an actress masquerading as a saint. But Lucía found in the temple a Virgin of Lourdes, which charmed her exceedingly. It stood in a grotto of blooming roses and chrysanthemums, and above its head was the legend: I am the Immaculate Conception. Lucía knew very little about the apparitions of Bernadette, the shepherdess, or the miracles of the sacred mountain; but notwithstanding this, the image exercised a singular fascination over her, seeming to call to her with mysterious voice that floated among the grateful perfumes of the flowers, and the flickering of the tall white tapers. The image, gay, smiling, and simple, with floating robes and blue mantle, touched Lucía’s soul more than the stiff images of the cathedral of Leon, clad in their pompous garments, had ever done. One afternoon, as she was going to the church, she saw a funeral procession pass along and she followed it. It was the funeral of a young girl, a Child of Mary. The beadle, dressed in black, a silver chain around his neck, walked with official gravity at the head of the procession; four young girls, dressed in white, followed him, their teeth chattering with cold, their cheeks violet, but proud of their important rôle of carrying the ribbons. Then came the priests, grave and composed, their rich voices swelling at intervals on the still air. Inside the hearse, adorned with black and white plumes, was the coffin covered with a snow-white cloth starred with orange-blossoms, white roses, and heaps of lilacs that swayed with every movement of the car. The Children of Mary, the companions of the deceased, walked along almost gayly, lifting up their muslin skirts to keep them from touching the muddy ground. The civil commissary, in his robes, headed the mourners; behind him came a crowd of women dressed in black, in the midst of whom walked the family of the dead girl, their faces red and their eyes swollen with weeping. The church bells tolled with melancholy sound while the coffin was being taken out of the hearse and placed on the catafalque. Lucía entered the nave and piously knelt down among those who were mourning for one whom she had never seen. She listened with a melancholy pleasure to the office for the dead, the prayers intoned in full and mellow voices by the priests. Those unknown Latin phrases had for her a clear signification; she did not understand the words, but she could comprehend without difficulty that they were laments, menaces, complaints, and at times ardent and tender sighs of love. And then, as had happened in the park, there came to her mind the secret thought, the desire to die, and she said to herself that the dead girl lying there in her coffin, covered with flowers, calm and peaceful,—seeing nothing, hearing nothing of the miseries of this wretched world, that goes round and round, and yet in all its countless revolutions never brings a good day nor an hour of happiness,—was more to be envied than she who was alive and obliged to feel, to think, and to act.

“Yes, but—the soul!” Lucía said to herself.

Thus curiously did a simple and ignorant girl repeat the thought expressed in the philosophical soliloquy of the Danish dreamer!

“Ah, and how good it must be to be dead,” thought Lucía. “Don Ignacio was right in saying that—that—well, that there is no such thing as happiness. If one only knew what fate awaited one in the other world! Where now is the soul of that body that lies there! And what would be the use of dying if after all one does not cease to exist, and to be conscious of what is going on around one.”