The Temptress (La tierra de todos)

by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

Groups of curiosity seekers were already admiring from afar the Frenchman’s improvisation of a wood. From Fuerte Sarmiento, and from as far as the capital of the territory of Neuquen, sight-seers were arriving, attracted by the novelty of the fiesta that was to be given at La Presa. Some workmen were still busy swinging ropes of vines from tree to tree, and nailing up clusters of banners.

Friterini, raised to the proud rank of head-waiter, had taken his somewhat dusty swallow tail out of his trunk, and had donned this relic of the days when he had served as emergency waiter in the hotels of Europe and Buenos Aires. Throwing out his stiff shirt bosom, and nervously struggling every few minutes with his white tie, he directed the operations of a troup of half-breed women from the boliche who had been transformed into waitresses and were setting the tables for the afternoon’s entertainment.

Don Antonio, in other words, the Gallego, had also been transformed, at least outwardly, for the occasion. He wore a black suit, and a thick gold chain dangled across his waistcoat. Don Antonio was one of the guests of the occasion; his right to figure among the important personages of the settlement had been recognized. However, as the refreshments had been entrusted to his establishment, he had thought it advisable to transfer himself to the scene of the festivities as early in the afternoon as possible in order to see to it that the preparations were properly attended to.

Among the spectators on the other side of the wire enclosure were several gauchos, among them the notorious Manos Duras, who, after the affair at the boliche, had quietly returned to the settlement in order to offer the explanations he thought adequate. He did not for a moment deny that some of those who had provoked the affair were friends of his, but they were all older and more experienced men than he, so he couldn’t very well be responsible for their acts. He wasn’t their father. When the row occurred he was far away from the settlement. What was the idea anyway in trying to implicate him in things for which he was not to blame?

The comisario had to content himself with these explanations; the proprietor of the boliche also made haste to accept them, in the belief that it was better to number the gaucho among one’s friends than one’s enemies. And now Manos Duras stood contemplating with a somewhat mocking stare the preparations for the garden party. The other gauchos, as silent as he, seemed to be laughing to themselves at all the goings-on. Those gringos, carrying trees away from the spot where God had planted them ... and for a woman!

The inhabitants of La Presa were more outspoken in their comments. In fact some were quite vociferous about them, and the better dressed of the women expressed themselves very freely on the subject of the marquesa.

“That great big doll ... tal! What she gets the men to do for her!”

And they rehearsed the expenditures that Pirovani, close, even hard-fisted in his dealings with the workmen, had made for this gringa. Every single day the train from Buenos Aires, or Bahía Blanca brought in presents for the marquesa, and all paid for out of the contractor’s pocket. And then there was the cart with a great tank set up on it, that did nothing else all day long but bring water from the river to the marquesa’s house, just because she had to have a bath every day!

“She must have something on her skin that won’t come off,” some of the women gravely asserted.

To all of them, obliged as they were to go to the river with a jar on their hips when they wanted water, this tank and cart represented the most unheard of and extravagant of comforts. A bath every day in that land where the slightest breath of wind raised columns of fine dust, columns so enormous that one had to bend way over towards the ground in order to keep one’s balance under their impact ...! And as every woman in the settlement had in her hair and the linings of her clothes the accumulated dust of a week, this extravagance in the use of water enraged them all. It reminded them too vividly of the differences and similarities between them and the marquesa. She had the things they didn’t have; but she was a woman like them ... yet she never for a moment shared in the life of this desert community as they knew it....