"Agreed. We'll be sweethearts. Let's see, consul. Say pretty things to me, of the sort that you folks say in Spain when you come to the grating."
That morning Luna returned to her house somewhat late for the lunch hour. The family was awaiting her impatiently. Zabulon looked at his niece with a stern glance. Her cousins Sol and Estrella alluded to the Spaniard in a jesting manner. The patriarch's eyes grew moist as he spoke of Spain and its consul.
Meanwhile the latter had stopped at the door of the Hindu bazaar to exchange a few words with Khiamull. He felt the necessity of sharing his brimming happiness with another. The Hindu was greener than ever. He coughed frequently and his smile, which resembled that of a bronze child, was really a dolorous grimace.
"Khiamull, long live love! Believe me, for I know much about life. You are sickly and some day you'll die, without beholding the sacred river of your native land. What you need is a companion, a girl from Gibraltar... or rather, from La Línea; a half gypsy, with her cloak, pinks in her hair and alluring manners. Am I not right, Khiamull?..."
The Hindu smiled with a certain scorn, shaking his head. No. Every one to his own. He was of his race and lived in voluntary solitude among the whites. Man can do nothing against the sympathies and aversions of the blood. Brahma, who was the sum of divine wisdom, separated all creatures into castes.
"But, man!... friend Khiamull! It seems to me that a girl of the kind I've mentioned is by no means to be despised...."
The Hindu smiled once more at the speaker's ignorance. Every race has its own tastes and its sense of smell. To Aguirre, who was a good fellow, he would dare to reveal a terrible secret. Did he see those whites, the Europeans, so content with their cleanliness and their baths?... They were all impure, polluted by a natural stench which it was impossible for them to wipe out. The son of the land of the lotus and the sacred clay was forced to make an effort in order to endure contact with them... They all smelled of raw meat.
[III]
IT was a winter afternoon; the sky was overcast and the air was gray, but it was not cold. Luna and the Spaniard were walking slowly along the road that leads to Europa Point, which is the extreme end of the peninsula of Gibraltar. They had left behind them the Alameda and the banks of the Arsenal, passing through leafy gardens, along reddish villas inhabited by officers of army and navy, huge hospitals resembling small towns, and garrisons that seemed like convents, with numerous galleries in which swarms of children were scurrying about; here, too, clothes and tableware were being washed and cleaned by the soldiers' wives—courageous wanderers over the globe, as much at home in the garrisons of India as in those of Canada. The fog concealed from view the coast of Africa, lending to the Strait the appearance of a shoreless sea. Before the pair of lovers stretched the dark waters of the bay, and the promontory of Tarifa revealed its black outline faintly in the fog, resembling a fabulous rhinoceros bearing upon its snout, like a horn, the tower of the lighthouse. Through the ashen-gray clouds there penetrated a timid sunbeam,—a triangle of misty light, similar to the luminous stream from a magic lantern,—which traced a large shaft of pale gold across the green-black surface of the sea. In the center of this circle of anemic light there floated, like a dying swan, the white spot of a sailboat.
The two lovers were oblivious to their surroundings. They walked along, engrossed in that amorous egotism which concentrates all life in a glance, or in the delicate contact of the bodies meeting and grazing each other at every step. Of all Nature there existed for them only the dying light of the afternoon, which permitted them to behold each other, and the rather warm breeze which, murmuring among the cacti and the palms, seemed to serve as the musical accompaniment to their conversation. At their right rumbled the far-off roar of the sea striking against the rocks. On their left reigned pastoral peace,—the melodious calm of the pines, broken from time to time only by the noise of the carts, which, followed by a platoon of soldiers in their shirt sleeves, wheeled up the roads of the mountain.