Maria (GB English) - страница 8

José led me to the river, and told me of his sowing and hunting, while I plunged into the diaphanous backwater from which the water cascaded in a small waterfall. On our return we found the provocative lunch served at the only table in the house. Corn was everywhere: in the mote soup served in glazed earthenware dishes and in golden arepas scattered on the tablecloth. The only piece of cutlery was crossed over my white plate and bordered with blue.

Mayo sat at my feet looking attentive, but more humble than usual.

José was mending a fishing line while his daughters, clever but shameful, served me with care, trying to guess in my eyes what I might be lacking. They had beautified themselves, and from being little girls, they had become official women.

After gulping down a glass of thick, frothy milk, the dessert of that patriarchal lunch, José and I went out to look around the orchard and the brushwood I was picking. He was amazed at my theoretical knowledge of sowing, and we returned to the house an hour later to say goodbye to the girls and my mother.

I put the good old man's mountain knife, which I had brought him from the kingdom, round his waist; around the necks of Tránsito and Lucía, precious rosaries, and in Luisa's hands a locket that she had entrusted to my mother. I took the turn of the mountain when it was noon by the edge of the day, according to José's examination of the sun.

Chapter X

On my return, which I did slowly, the image of Mary came back to my memory. Those solitudes, its silent forests, its flowers, its birds and its waters, why did they speak to me of her? What was there of Mary in the damp shadows, in the breeze that moved the foliage, in the murmur of the river? It was that I saw Eden, but she was missing; it was that I could not stop loving her, even though she did not love me. And I breathed in the perfume of the bouquet of wild lilies that Joseph's daughters had formed for me, thinking that perhaps they would deserve to be touched by Mary's lips: thus my heroic resolutions of the night had been weakened in so few hours.

As soon as I got home, I went to my mother's sewing room: Maria was with her; my sisters had gone to the bathroom. After answering my greeting, Maria lowered her eyes to her sewing. My mother expressed her delight at my return; they had been startled at home by the delay, and had sent for me at that moment. I talked to her, pondering over Joseph's progress, and Mayo tongued my dresses to get rid of the hips that had got caught in the weeds.

Mary raised her eyes again, and fixed them on the bunch of lilies which I held in my left hand, while I leaned with my right on the shotgun: I thought I understood that she wanted them, but an indefinable fear, a certain respect for my mother and my intentions for the evening, prevented me from offering them to her. But I delighted in imagining how beautiful one of my little lilies would look on her lustrous brown hair. They must have been for her, for she would have gathered orange blossoms and violets in the morning for the vase on my table. When I went into my room I did not see a flower there. If I had found a viper rolled up on the table, I would not have felt the same emotion as the absence of the flowers: its fragrance had become something of Mary's spirit that wandered around me in the hours of study, that swayed in the curtains of my bed during the night.... Ah, so it was true that she did not love me, so my visionary imagination had been able to deceive me so much! And what could I do with the bouquet I had brought for her? If another woman, beautiful and seductive, had been there at that moment, at that moment of resentment against my pride, of resentment against Mary, I would have given it to her on condition that she would show it to all and beautify herself with it. I lifted it to my lips as if to bid farewell for the last time to a cherished illusion, and threw it out of the window.