Section 4

At last the time came to satisfy the supreme rite of Peruvian households looking forward to this event: she made the pilgrimage to the shrine of Santa Maria de Cluxambuqua. If there resided any efficacy in devotion at all, surely it lay in a visit to this great shrine. The ground had been holy through three religions; even before the In- can civilization distraught human beings had hugged the rocks and lashed themselves with whips to wring their will from the skies. Thither
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the Marquesa was carried in her chair, crossing the bridge of San Luis Rey and ascending up into the hills toward that city of large-girdled women, a tranquil town, slow-moving and slow-smiling; a city of crystal air, cold as the springs that fed its many fountains; a city of bells, soft and musi- cal, and tuned to carry on with one another the happiest quarrels. If anything turned out for disappointment in the town of Cluxambuqua the grief was somehow assimilated by the overwhelm- ing immanence of the Andes and by the weather of quiet joy that flowed in and about the side- streets. No sooner did the Marquesa see from a distance the white walls of this town perched on the knees of the highest peaks than her fingers ceased turning the beads and the busy prayers of her fright were cut short on her lips.
She did not even alight at the inn, but leaving Pepita to arrange for their stay she went on to the church and knelt for a long time patting her hands softly together. She was listening to the
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THE MARQUESA DE MONTEMAYOR new tide of resignation that was rising within her. Perhaps she would learn in time to permit both her daughter and her gods to govern their own affairs. She was not annoyed by the whisper- ing of the old women in padded garments who sold candles and medals and talked about money from dawn to dark. She was not even distracted by an officious sacristan who tried to collect a fee for something or other and who, from spite, made her change her place under the pretext of repair- ing a tile on the floor. Presently she went out into the sunshine and sat on the steps of the fountain. She watched the little processions of invalids slowly revolving about the gardens. She watched three hawks plunging about the sky. The children who had been playing by the fountain stared at her for a moment, and went away alarmed, but a llama (a lady with a long neck and sweet shal- low eyes, burdened down by a fur cape too heavy for her and picking her way delicately down an
interminable staircase) came over and offered her 73
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a velvet cleft nose to stroke. The llama is deeply interested in the men about her, is even fond of pretending that she too is one of them and of in- serting her head into their conversations as though in a moment she would lift her voice and con- tribute a wan and helpful comment. Soon Doña Maria was surrounded by a number of these sis- ters who seemed on the point of asking her why she clapped her hands so and how much her veil- ing cost a yard.
Doña Maria had arranged that any letters ar- riving from Spain should be brought to her at once by a special messenger. She had travelled slowly from Lima and even now as she sat in the square a boy from her farm ran up and put into her hand a large packet wrapped in parch- ment and dangling some nuggets of sealing-wax. Slowly she undid the wrappings. With measured stoic gestures she read first an affectionate and jocose note from her son-in-law; then her daugh- ter’s letter. It was full of wounding remarks
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THE MARQUESA DE MONTEMAYOR rather brilliantly said, perhaps said for the sheer virtuosity of giving pain neatly. Each of its phrases found its way through the eyes of the Marquesa, then, carefully wrapped in under- standing and forgiveness it sank into her heart. At last she arose, gently dispersed the sympathetic llamas, and with a grave face returned to the shrine.
While Dona Maria was passing the late after- noon in the Church and in the Square, Pepita was left to prepare their lodging. She showed the porters where to lay down the great wicker hampers and set about unpacking the altar, the brazier, the tapestries and the portraits of Doña Clara. She descended into the kitchen and gave the cook exact instructions as to the preparations of a certain porridge upon which the Marquesa principally subsisted. Then she returned to the rooms and waited. She resolved to write a letter to the Abbess. She hung for a long time over the quill, staring into the distance with trembling
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THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY lip. She saw the face of Madre Maria del Pilar, so red and scrubbed, and the wonderful black eyes. She heard her voice as at the close of sup- per (the orphans sitting with lowered eyes and folded hands) she commented on the events of the day, or as, by candelight, she stood among the beds of the hospital and announced the theme for meditation during the night. But most clearly of all Pepita remembered the sudden interviews when the Abbess (not daring to wait until the girl was older) had discussed with her the duties of her office. She had talked to Pepita as to an equal. Such speech is troubling and wonderful to an in- telligent child and Madre Maria del Pilar had abused it. She had expanded Pepita’s vision of how she should feel and act beyond the meas- ure of her years. And she had unthinkingly turned upon Pepita the full blaze of her personality, as Jupiter had turned his upon Semele. Pepita was frightened by her sense of insufficiency; she hid it and wept. And then the Abbess had cast the 76
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THE MARQUESA DE MONTEMAYOR child into the discipline of this long solitude, where Pepita struggled, refusing to let herself be- lieve that she had been abandoned. And now from this strange inn in these strange mountains, where the altitude was making her lightheaded, Pepita longed for the dear presence, the only real thing in her life.
She wrote a letter, all inkstains and incoherence. Then she went downstairs to see about fresh char- coal and to taste the porridge.
The Marquesa came in and sat down at the table. “I can do no more. What will be, will be,” she whispered. She unbound from her neck the amulets of her superstition and dropped them into the glowing brazier. She had a strange sense of having antagonized God by too much prayer and so addressed Him now obliquely. “After all it is in the hands of another. I no longer claim the least influence. What will be, will be.” She sat for a long time, her palms against her cheeks, making a blank of her mind. Her eyes fell on
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THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY Pepita’s letter. She opened it mechanically and started to read. She had read a full half of it be- fore her attention was aware of the meaning of the words: “. . . but all this is nothing if you like me and wish me to stay with her. I oughtn’t to tell you but every now and then the bad cham- bermaids lock me up in rooms and steal things and perhaps My Lady will think that I steal them. I hope not. I hope you are well and not having any trouble in the hospital or anywhere. Though I never see you I think of you all the time and I remember what you told me, my dear mother in God. I want to do only what you want, but if you could let me come back for a few days to the con- vent, but not if you do not wish it. But I am so much alone and not talking to anyone, and every- thing. Sometimes I do not know whether you have forgotten me and if you could find a minute to write me a little letter or something, I could keep it, but I know how busy you are. . . .”
Doña Maria read no further. She folded the 80
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letter and put it aside. For a moment she was filled with envy: she longed to command an- ` other’s soul as completely as this nun was able to do. Most of all she longed to be back in this simplicity of love, to throw off the burden of pride and vanity that hers had always carried. To quiet the tumult in her mind she picked up a book of devotion and tried to fix her attention upon the words. But after a moment she sud- denly felt the need to reread the whole letter, to surprise, if possible, the secret of so much felic- ity.
Pepita returned bringing the supper in her hands, followed by a maid. Dona Maria watched her over the top of her book as she would have watched a visitor from Heaven. Pepita tiptoed about the room laying the table and whispering directions to her assistant.
“Your supper is ready, My Lady,” she said at last.
“But, my child, you are going to eat with me?”
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THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY In Lima Pepita generally sat down at the table with her mistress.
“Т thought you would be tired, My Lady. І had my supper downstairs.”
“She does not wish to eat with me,” thought the Marquesa. “She knows me and has rejected me.”
“Would you like me to read aloud to you while you are eating, My Lady?” asked Pepita, who felt that she had made a mistake.
“No. You may go to bed, if you choose.”
“Thank you, My Lady.”
Dona Maria had risen and approached the table. With one hand on the back of the chair she said haltingly: “My dear child, I am sending off a letter to Lima in the morning. If you have one you can enclose it with mine.”
“No, I have none,” said Pepita. She added hastily: “I must go downstairs and get you the new charcoal.”
“But, my dear, you have one for . . . Madre Maria del Pilar. Wouldn’t you . . .?”
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Pepita pretended to be busy over the brazier. “No, I’m not going to send it,” she said. She was aware during the long pause that followed that the Marquesa was staring at her in stupefaction. “Dye changed my mind.”
“Т know she would like a letter from you, Pepita. It would make her very happy. 1 know.”
Pepita was reddening. She said loudly: “The innkeeper said that there would be some new charcoal ready for you at dark. ГИ tell them to bring it up now.” She glanced hastily at the old woman and saw that she had not ceased from staring at her with great sad inquiring eyes. Pepita felt that these were not things one talked about, but the strange woman seemed to be feel- ing the matter so strongly that Pepita was willing to concede one more answer: “No, it was a bad letter. It wasn’t a good letter.”
Dofia Maria fairly gasped. “Why, my dear Pepita, I think it was very beautiful. Believe
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THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY me, I know. No, no; what could have made it a bad letter?” |
Pepita frowned, hunting for a word that would close the matter.
“Tt wasn’t. . . it wasn’t . . . brave,” she said. And then she would say no more. She carried the letter off into her own room and could be heard tearing it up. Then she got into bed and lay star- ing into the darkness, still uncomfortable at hav- ing talked in such a fashion. And Doña María sat down to her dish amazed.
She had never brought courage to either life or love. Her eyes ransacked her heart. She thought of the amulets and of her beads, her drunken- ness . . . she thought of her daughter. She re- membered the long relationship, crowded with the wreckage of exhumed conversations, of fancied slights, of inopportune confidences, of charges of neglect and exclusion (but she must have been mad that day; she remembered beating upon the table). “But it’s not my fault,” she cried. “It’s
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THE MARQUESA DE MONTEMAYOR not my fault that I was so. It was circumstance. It was the way I was brought up. Tomorrow I be- gin a new life. Wait and see, oh my child.” At last she cleared away the table and sitting down wrote what she called her first letter, her first stumbling misspelled letter in courage. She re- membered with shame that in the previous one she had piteously asked her daughter how much she loved her, and had greedily quoted the few and hesitant endearments that Dofia Clara had lately ventured to her. Dofia Maria could not recall those pages, but she could write some new ones, free and generous. No one else has regarded them as stumbling. It is the famous letter LVI, known to the Encyclopedists as her Second Corinthians because of its immortal paragraph about love: “Of the thousands of persons we meet in a life- time, my child . . .” and so on. It was almost dawn when she finished the letter. She opened the door upon her balcony and looked at the great tiers of stars that glittered above the Andes.
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THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY Throughout the hours of the night, though there had been few to hear it, the whole sky had been loud with the singing of these constellations. Then she took a candle into the next room and looked at Pepita as she slept, and pushed back the damp hair from the girl’s face. “Let me live now,” she whispered. “Let me begin again.”
Two days later they started back to Lima, and while crossing the bridge of San Luis Rey the ac- cident which we know befell them.
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PART THREE:
ESTEBAN
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PART THREE: ESTEBAN
NE morning twin boys were discovered in the foundlings’ basket before the door of the Convent of Santa Maria
Rosa de las Rosas. Names were found for them almost before the arrival of the wet-nurse, but the names were not as useful to them as our names are to most of us, for no one ever succeeded in telling the boys apart. There was no way of knowing who their parents were, but Limean gos- sips, noticing as the boys grew older how straight they held themselves and how silent and sombre they were, declared them to be Castilian and laid them in turn at all sorts of crested doorways. The person in the world who came nearest to being their guardian was the Abbess of the Convent. Madre Maria del Pilar had come to hate all men, 89
THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY but she grew fond of Manuel and Esteban. In the late afternoon she would call them into her office, send for some cakes from the kitchen, and tell them stories about the Cid and Judas Macca- beus and the thirty-six misfortunes of Harlequin. She grew to love them so, that she would catch herself gazing deep into their black and frown- ing eyes, looking for those traits that would ap- pear when they grew to be men, all that ugliness, all that soullessness that made hideous the world she worked in. They grew up about the convent until they were a little past the age when their presence began to be a slight distraction to the dedicated sisters. From thence they became vaguely attached to all the sacristies in town: they trimmed all the cloister hedges; they pol- ished every possible crucifix; they passed a damp cloth once a year over most of the ecclesiastical ceilings. All Lima knew them well. When the priest rushed through the streets carrying his precious burden into a sickroom either Esteban 90
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or Manuel was to be seen striding behind him, swinging a censer. As they grew older, however, they showed no desire for the clerical life. They gradually assumed the profession of the scribe. There were few printing presses in the New World and the boys soon made a fair living transcribing comedies for the theatre, ballads for the crowds, and advertisements for the merchants. Above all they were the copyists of the choirmasters and made endless parts of the motets of Morales and Vittoria.
Because they had no family, because they were twins, and because they were brought up by women, they were silent. There was in them a curious shame in regard to their resemblance. They had to live in a world where it was the subject of continual comment and joking. It was never funny to them and they suffered the eternal pleasantries with stolid patience. From the years when they first learned to speak they invented a secret language for themselves, one that was
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THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY scarcely dependent on the Spanish for its vocab- ulary, or even for its syntax. They resorted to it only when they were alone, or at great intervals in moments of stress whispered it in the presence of others. The Archbishop of Lima was something of a philologist; he dabbled in dialects; he had even evolved quite a brilliant table for the vowel and consonant changes from Latin into Spanish and from Spanish into Indian-Spanish. He was storing up notebooks of quaint lore against an amusing old age he planned to offer himself back on his estates outside Segovia. So when he heard one day about the secret language of the twin brothers, he trimmed some quills and sent for them. The boys stood humiliated upon the rich carpets of his study while he tried to extract from them their bread and tree and their J see and I saw. They did not know why the experience was so horrible to them. They bled. Long shocked si- lences followed each of the Archbishop’s ques- tions, until finally one or the other mumbled an