“A festival like one of those,” declared the girl, very seriously, “is better than all the diversions of Madrid put together. There I was very gay and I danced every Sunday; here I feel as if my paletilla[A] had sunk in.”
[A] Paletilla: xiphisternum, metasternum, or ensiform cartilage.
“And what do you mean by that? Tell me.”
“It is a bone that we have here,” she answered, touching her breast, “that when it sinks in, it seems as if one’s soul sank, too; one keeps growing sadder and sadder, and one loses one’s color and appetite, so that after a while if one doesn’t get it raised again, one dies.”
“Do you believe that, child?”
“It is the truth. Some people say that all that about the paletilla is the effect of witchcraft, but I have seen two or three die already because they wouldn’t have it raised.”
“Well, then, Suriña, sometimes it seems as if my paletilla, too, had fallen, for I have fits of the spleen and I lose my appetite completely. I have got the notion into my head that as soon as I go home I shall get strong and grow as fat as a pig—so,” and he puffed out his cheeks to show how fat he expected to become. “Here, I will always be as thin as a lath. The life here is not calculated to make one grow strong. Come, tell me something about home.”
Esclavita obeyed, and began to narrate, without order or descriptive skill, incidents connected with her own history rather than having any relation to the country. “When I was a child, such or such a thing took place—” “One afternoon when I went to see the sardine fishing—” “When I was learning to make lace with the bobbins—” “Once when we were baking the bread in our oven.” The very personality of these recollections lent them a singular charm in Rogelio’s eyes. While he listened to the girl’s words, it seemed as if the vanished memories of his childhood took definite and distinct shape in his mind. The room seemed to be filled with rural scents of mint, anise, new-mown hay. The illusion was so strong that he drew Esclava’s head toward him and smelled it. “Your hair smells like—like the fields,” he said. While the girl talked, his determination to go home grew every moment stronger. “If I don’t go home,” he thought, “I shall never be a man. It is the first thing to be done. I am going to ask mamma to go when she is well. It is a wonder she has never gone there before to spend the summer instead of going to that ill-smelling, crowded San Sebastián. The moment I set foot in the old land I shall grow as strong as a young ox.”
“Ah, Señorito,” said Esclavita softly, “how ugly and arid all the country on the way coming here seemed to me! Not a solitary tree, not a streamlet, not a green bush. How can the farmers live here?”