Luna Benamor

by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

The road, hewn out of the rough declivity, meandered through gardens wild with African exuberance. The pear trees extended, like green fences, their serried rows of prickle-laden leaves; the century-plants opened like a profusion of bayonets, blackish or salmon-red in color; the old agaves shot their stalks into the air straight as masts, which were topped by extended branches that gave them the appearance of telegraph poles. In the midst of this wild vegetation arose the lonely summer residence of the governor. Beyond was solitude, silence, interrupted only by the roar of the sea as it disappeared into invisible caves.

Soon the two lovers noticed, at a great distance, signs of motion amidst the vegetation of the slope. The stones rolled down as if some one were pushing them under his heel; the wild plants bent under an impulse of flight, and shrill sounds, as if coming from a child being maltreated, rent the air. Aguirre, concentrating his attention, thought he saw some gray forms jumping amid the dark verdure.

"Those are the monkeys of the Rock," said Luna calmly, as she had seen them many times.

At the end of the path was the famous Cave of the Monkeys. Now Aguirre could see them plainly, and they looked like agile, shaggy-haired bundles jumping from rock to rock, sending the loose pebbles rolling from under their hands and feet and showing, as they fled, the inflamed protuberances under their stiff tails.

Before coming up to the Cave of the Monkeys the two lovers paused. The end of the road was in sight a little further along abruptly cut off by a precipitous projection of the rock. At the other side, invisible, was the bay of the Catalanes with its town of fisherfolk,—the only dependency of Gibraltar. The cliff, in this solitude, acquired a savage grandeur. Human beings were as nothing; natural forces here had free range, with all their impetuous majesty. From the road could be seen the sea far, far below. The boats, diminished by the distance, seemed like black insects with antennae of smoke, or white butterflies with their wings spread. The waves seemed only light curls on the immense blue plain.

Aguirre wished to go down and contemplate at closer range the gigantic wall which the sea beat against. A rough, rocky path led, in a straight line, to an entrance hewn out of the stone, backed by a ruined wall, a hemispherical sentry-box and several shanties whose roofs had been carried off by the tempests. These were the débris of old fortifications,—perhaps dating back to the time in which the Spaniards had tried to reconquer the place.

As Luna descended, with uncertain step, supported by her lover's hand and scattering pebbles at every turn, the melodious silence of the sea was broken by a reverberating raack! as if a hundred fans had been brusquely opened. For a few seconds everything vanished from before their eyes; the blue waters, the red crags, the foam of the breakers,—under a flying cloud of grayish white that spread out at their feet. This was formed by hundreds of sea-gulls who had been frightened from their place of refuge and were taking to flight; there were old, huge gulls, as fat as hens, young gulls, as white and graceful as doves. They flew off uttering shrill cries, and as this cloud of fluttering wings dissolved, there came into view with all its grandeur, the promontory and the deep waters that beat against it in ceaseless undulation.

It was necessary to raise one's head and to lift one's eyes to behold in all its height this fortress of Nature, sheer, gray, without any sign of human presence other than the flagstaff visible at the summit, as small as a toy. Over all the extensive face of this enormous cliff there was no other projection than several masses of dark vegetation, clumps suspended from the rock. Below, the waves receded and advanced, like blue bulls that retreat a few paces so as to attack with all the greater force; as an evidence of this continuous assault, which had been going on for centuries and centuries, there were the crevices opened in the rock, the mouths of the caves, gates of ghostly suggestion and mystery through which the waves plunged with terror-inspiring roar. The débris of these openings, the fragments of the ageless assaults,—loosened crags, piled up by the tempests,—formed a chain of reefs between whose teeth the sea combed its foamy hair or raged with livid frothing on stormy days.

The lovers remained seated among the old fortifications, beholding at their feet the blue immensity and before their eyes the seemingly interminable wall that barred from sight a great part of the horizon. Perhaps on the other side of the cliff the gold of the sunset was still shining. On this side already the shades of night were gently falling. The sweethearts were silent, overwhelmed by the silence of the spot, united to each other by an impulse of fear, crushed by their insignificance in the midst of this annihilating vastness, even as two Egyptian ants in the shadow of the Great Pyramid.

Aguirre felt the necessity of saying something, and his voice took on a grave character, as if in those surroundings, impregnated with the majesty of Nature, it was impossible to speak otherwise.