Maria (GB English) - страница 7

I descended to the mountainous plain of the river by the same path by which I had done so many times six years before. The thunder of its flow was increasing, and before long I discovered the streams, impetuous as they rushed over the falls, boiling into boiling foam in the falls, crystal clear and smooth in the backwaters, always rolling over a bed of moss-covered boulders, fringed on the banks by iracales, ferns and reeds with yellow stems, silky plumage and purple seed-beds.

I stopped in the middle of the bridge, formed by the hurricane with a stout cedar, the same where I had once passed. Flowery parasites hung from its slats, and blue and iridescent bells came down in festoons from my feet to sway in the waves. A luxuriant and haughty vegetation vaulted the river at intervals, and through it a few rays of the rising sun penetrated, as through the broken roof of a deserted Indian temple. Mayo howled cowardly on the bank I had just left, and at my urging resolved to pass over the fantastic bridge, taking at once, before me, the path that led to the possession of old José, who was expecting from me that day the payment of his welcome visit.

After a little steep and dark slope, and after skipping over the dry trees from the last felling of the highlander, I found myself in the little place planted with vegetables, from where I could see the little house in the midst of the green hills, which I had left among seemingly indestructible woods, smoking. The cows, beautiful in their size and colour, bellowed at the corral gate in search of their calves. The domestic fowls were in an uproar, receiving their morning ration; in the palm trees near by, which had been spared by the axe of the husbandmen, the oropendolas swayed noisily in their hanging nests, and in the midst of such a pleasant hubbub, one could sometimes hear the shrill cry of the birdcatcher, who, from his barbecue and armed with a slingshot, shooed away the hungry macaws that fluttered over the cornfield.

The Antioquian's dogs gave him warning of my arrival with their barking. Mayo, fearful of them, approached me sullenly. José came out to greet me, axe in one hand and hat in the other.

The little dwelling denoted industriousness, economy and cleanliness: everything was rustic, but comfortably arranged, and everything in its place. The living-room of the little house, perfectly swept, with bamboo benches all round, covered with reed mats and bearskins, some illuminated paper prints representing saints, and pinned with orange thorns to the unbleached walls, had on the right and left the bedroom of Joseph's wife and that of the girls. The kitchen, made of reed and with a roof of leaves of the same plant, was separated from the house by a small vegetable garden where parsley, camomile, pennyroyal and basil mingled their aromas.

The women seemed more neatly dressed than usual. The girls, Lucia and Transito, wore petticoats of purple sarsen, and very white shirts with lace gowns trimmed with black braid, under which they hid part of their rosaries, and chokers of opal-coloured glass bulbs. The thick, jet-coloured plaits of their hair played on their backs at the slightest movement of their bare, careful, restless feet. They spoke to me with great shyness; and it was their father who, noticing this, encouraged them, saying: "Is not Ephraim the same child, because he comes from school wise and grown up? Then they became more jovial and smiling: they linked us amicably with the memories of childhood games, powerful in the imagination of poets and women. With old age, José's physiognomy had gained a lot: although he did not grow a beard, his face had something biblical about it, like almost all those of the old men of good manners in the country where he was born: abundant grey hair shaded his broad, toasted forehead, and his smiles revealed a calmness of soul. Luisa, his wife, happier than he in the struggle with the years, retained in her dress something of the Antioquian manner, and her constant joviality made it clear that she was content with her lot.