Luna Benamor

(In the city of Toledo, in the city of Granada, there is a handsome youth called Diego Leon. He fell in love with Tamar, who was a Spanish Jewess....)

There still echoed in her memory fragments of these ancient chronicles that had brought many a tremor to her dreamy childhood. She desired to be Tamar; she would have waited years and years for the handsome youth, who would be as brave and arrogant as Judas Maccabeus himself, the Cid of the Jews, the lion of Judea, the lion of lions; and now her hopes were being fulfilled, and her hero had appeared at last, coming out of the land of mystery, with his conqueror's stride, his haughty head, his dagger eyes, as Miriam said. How proud it made her feel! And instinctively, as if she feared that the apparition would vanish, she slipped her hand about Aguirre's arm, leaning against him with caressing humility.

They had reached Europa Point, the outermost lighthouse of the promontory. On an esplanade surrounded by military buildings there was a group of ruddy young men, their khaki trousers held in place by leather braces and their arms bare, kicking and driving a huge ball about. They were soldiers. They stopped their game for a moment to let the couple pass. There was not a single glance for Luna from this group of strong, clean-living youths, who had been trained to a cold sexuality by physical fatigue and the cult of brawn.

As they turned a corner of the promontory they continued their walk on the eastern side of the cliff. This part was unoccupied; here tempests and the raging winds from the Levant came to vent their fury. On this side were no other fortifications than those of the summit, almost hidden by the clouds which, coming from the sea, encountered the gigantic rampart of rock and scaled the peaks as if assaulting them.

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.

"I love you," he began, with the incongruity of one who passes without transition from long meditation to the spoken word. "I love you, for you are of my race and yet you are not; because you speak my language and yet your blood is not my blood. You possess the grace and beauty of the Spanish woman, yet there is something more in you,—something exotic, that speaks to me of distant lands, of poetic things, of unknown perfumes that I seem to smell whenever I am near you.... And you, Luna. Why do you love me?"

"I love you," she replied, after a long silence, her voice solemn and veiled like that of an emotional soprano, "I love you because you, too, have something in your face that resembles those of my race, and yet you are as distinct from them as is the servant from the master. I love you… I don't know why. In me there dwells the soul of the ancient Jewesses of the desert, who went to the well in the oasis with their hair let down and their pitchers on their heads. Then came the Gentile stranger, with his camels, begging water; she looked at him with her solemn, deep eyes, and as she poured the water in between her white hands she gave him her heart, her whole soul, and followed him like a slave.... Your people killed and robbed mine; for centuries my forefathers wept in strange lands the loss of their new Zion, their beautiful land, their nest of consolation. I ought to hate you, but I love you; I am yours and will follow you wherever you go." The blue shadows of the promontory became deeper. It was almost night. The sea-gulls, shrieking, retired to their hiding-places in the rocks. The sea commenced to disappear beneath a thin mist. The lighthouse of Europe shone like a diamond from afar in the heavens above the Strait, which were still clear. A sweet somnolence seemed to arise from the dying day, enveloping all Nature. The two human atoms, lost in this immensity, felt themselves invaded by the universal tremor, oblivious to all that but a short time before had constituted their lives. They forgot the presence of the city on the other side of the mountain; the existence of humanity, of which they were infinitesimal parts.... Completely alone, penetrating each other through their pupils! Thus, thus forever! There was a crackling sound in the dark, like dry branches creaking before they break.

All at once a red flash sped through the air,—something straight and rapid as the flight of a fiery bird. Then the mountain trembled and the sea echoed under a dry thunder. The sunset gun!… A timely boom.

The two shuddered as though just awakening from a dream. Luna, as if in flight, ran down the path in search of the main road, without listening to Aguirre.... She was going to get home late; she would never visit that spot again. It was dangerous.

IV

THE consul wandered through Royal Street, his pipe out, his glance sad and his cane hanging from his arm. He was depressed. When, during his walking back and forth he stopped instinctively before Khiamull's shop, he had to pass on. Khiamull was not there. Behind the counter were only two clerks, as greenish in complexion as their employer. His poor friend was in the hospital, in the hope that a few days of rest away from the damp gloom of the shop would be sufficient to relieve him of the cough that seemed to unhinge his body and make him throw up blood. He came from the land of the sun and needed its divine caress.

Aguirre might have stopped at the Aboabs' establishment, but he was somewhat afraid. The old man whimpered with emotion, as usual, when he spoke to the consul, but in his kindly, patriarchal gestures there was something new that seemed to repel the Spaniard. Zabulon received him with a grunt and would continue counting money.

For four days Aguirre had not seen Luna. The hours that he spent at his window, vainly watching the house of the Aboabs! Nobody on the roof; nobody behind the blinds, as if the house were unoccupied. Several times he encountered on the street the wife and daughters of Zabulon, but they passed him by pretending not to see him, solemn and haughty in their imposing obesity.

Luna was no more to be seen than as if she had left Gibraltar. One morning he thought he recognized her delicate hand opening the blinds; he imagined that he could distinguish, through the green strips of wood, the ebony crown of her hair, and her luminous eyes raised toward him. But it was a fleeting apparition that lasted only a second. When he tried to make a gesture of entreaty, when he moved his arms imploring her to wait, Luna had already disappeared.

How was he to approach her, breaking through the guarded aloofness in which Jewish families dwell? To whom was he to go for an explanation of this unexpected change?… Braving the icy reception with which the Aboabs greeted him, he entered their place under various pretexts. The proprietors received him with frigid politeness, as if he were an unwelcome customer. The Jews who came in on business eyed him with insolent curiosity, as if but a short time before they had been discussing him.

One morning he saw, engaged in conversation with Zabulon, a man of about forty, of short stature, somewhat round shouldered with spectacles. He wore a high silk hat, a loose coat and a large golden chain across his waistcoat. In a somewhat sing-song voice he was speaking of the greatness of Buenos Aires, of the future that awaited those of his race in that city, of the good business he had done. The affectionate attention with which the old man and his son listened to the man suggested a thought to Aguirre that sent all the blood to his heart, at the same time producing a chill in the rest of his body. He shuddered with surprise. Could it be he?… And after a few seconds, instinctively, without any solid grounds, he himself gave the answer. Yes; it was he; there had been no mistake. Without a doubt he beheld before him Luna's promised husband, who had just returned from South America. And if he still had any doubts as to the correctness of his conjecture, he was strengthened in his belief by a rapid glance from the man,—a cold, scornful look that was cast upon him furtively, while the looker continued to speak with his relatives.

That night he saw him again on Royal Street. He saw him, but not alone. He was arm in arm with Luna, who was dressed in black; Luna, who leaned upon him as if he were already her husband; the two walked along with all the freedom of Jewish engaged couples. She did not see Aguirre or did not wish to see him. As she passed him by she turned her head, pretending to be engrossed in conversation with her companion.

Aguirre's friends, who were gathered in a group on the sidewalk before the Exchange, laughed at the meeting, with the light-heartedness of persons who look upon love only as a pastime.

"Friend," said one of them to the Spaniard, "they've stolen her away from you. The Jew's carrying her off.... It couldn't have been otherwise. They marry only among themselves… and that girl has lots of money."

Aguirre did not sleep a wink that night; he lay awake planning the most horrible deeds of vengeance. In any other country he knew what he would do; he would insult the Jew, slap him, fight a duel, kill him; and if the man did not respond to such provocation, he would pursue him until he left the field free.... But he lived here in another world; a country that was ignorant of the knightly procedure of ancient peoples. A challenge to a duel would cause laughter, like something silly and extravagant. He could, of course, attack his enemy right in the street, bring him to his knees and kill him if he tried to defend himself. But ah! English justice did not recognize love nor did it accept the existence of crimes of passion. Yonder, half way up the slope of the mountain, in the ruins of the castle that had been occupied by the Moorish kings of Gibraltar, he had seen the prison, filled with men from all lands, especially Spaniards, incarcerated for life because they had drawn the poniard under the impulse of love or jealousy, just as they were accustomed to doing a few metres further on, at the other side of the boundary. The whip worked with the authorization of the law; men languished and died turning the wheel of the pump. A cold, methodical cruelty, a thousand times worse than the fanatic savagery of the Inquisition, devoured human creatures, giving them nothing more than the exact amount of sustenance necessary to prolong their torture.... No. This was another world, where his jealousy and his fury could find no vent. And he would have to lose Luna without a cry of protest, without a gesture of manly rebellion!…Now, upon beholding himself parted from her, he felt for the first time the genuine importance of his love; a love that had been begun as a pastime, through an exotic curiosity, and which was surely going to upset his entire existence… What was he to do?

He recalled the words of one of those inhabitants of Gibraltar who had accompanied him on Royal Street,—a strange mixture of Andalusian sluggishness and British apathy.

"Take my word for it, friend, the chief Rabbi and those of the synagogue have a hand in this. You were scandalizing them; everybody saw you making love in public. You don't realize how important one of these fellows is. They enter the homes of the faithful and run everything, giving out orders that nobody dares to disobey."

The following day Aguirre did not leave his street, and either walked up and down in front of the Aboabs' house or stood motionless at the entrance to his hotel, without losing sight for a moment of Luna's dwelling. Perhaps she would come out! After the meeting of the previous day she must have lost her fear. They must have a talk. Here it was three months since he had come to Gibraltar, forgetting his career, in danger of ruining it, abusing the influence of his relatives. And was he going to leave that woman without exchanging a final word, without knowing the cause for the sudden overturn?…

Toward night-fall Aguirre experienced a strange shudder of emotion, similar to that which he had felt in the brokers' shop upon beholding the Jew that had just returned from South America. A woman came out of the Aboabs' house; she was dressed in black. It was Luna, just as he had seen her the day before.

She turned her head slowly and Aguirre understood that she had seen him,—that perhaps she had been watching him for a long time hidden behind the blinds. She began to walk hastily, without turning her head, and Aguirre followed her at a certain distance, on the opposite sidewalk, jostling through the groups of Spanish workmen who, with their bundles in their hands, were returning from the Arsenal to the town of La Línea, before the sunset gun should sound and the place be closed. Thus he shadowed her along Royal Street, and as she arrived at the Exchange, Luna continued by way of Church Street, passing by the Catholic Cathedral. Here there were less people about and the shops were fewer; except at the corners of the lanes where there were small groups of men that had formed on coming from work. Aguirre quickened his gait so as to catch up with Luna, while she, as if she had guessed his intention, slackened her step. As they reached the rear of the Protestant church, near the opening called Cathedral Square, the two met.

"Luna! Luna!…"

She turned her glance upon Aguirre, and then instinctively they made for the end of the square, fleeing from the publicity of the street. They came to the Moorish arcades of the evangelist temple, whose colors were beginning to grow pale, vanishing into the shade of dusk. Before either of them could utter a word they were enveloped in a wave of soft melody,—music that seemed to come from afar, stray chords from the organ, the voices of virgins and children who were chanting in English with bird-like notes the glory of the Lord.

Aguirre was at a loss for words. All his angry thoughts were forgotten. He felt like crying, like kneeling and begging something of that God, whoever He might be, who was at the other side of the walls, lulled by the hymn from the throat of the mystic birds with firm and virginal voices:

"Luna!… Luna!"

He could say nothing else, but the Jewess, stronger than he and less sensitive to that music which was not hers, spoke to him in a low and hurried voice. She had stolen out just to see him; she must talk with him, say good-bye. It was the last time they would meet.

Aguirre heard her without fully understanding her words. All his attention was concentrated upon her eyes, as if the five days in which they had not met were the same as a long voyage, and as if he were seeking in Luna's countenance some effect of the extended lapse of time that had intervened. Was she the same?… Yes it was she. But her lips were somewhat pale with emotion; she pressed her lids tightly together as if every word cost her a prodigious effort, as if every one of them tore out part of her soul. Her lashes, as they met, revealed in the corner of her eyes lines that seemed to indicate fatigue, recent tears, sudden age.

The Spaniard was at last able to understand what she was saying. But was it all true?… To part! Why? Why?… And as he stretched his arms out to her in the vehemence of his entreaty Luna became paler still, huddling together timidly, her eyes dilated with fear.

It was impossible for their love to continue. She must look upon all the past as a beautiful dream; perhaps the best of her life… but the moment of waking had come. She was marrying, thus fulfilling her duty toward her family and her race. The past had been a wild escapade, a childish flight of her exalted and romantic nature. The wise men of her people had clearly pointed out to her the dangerous consequences of such frivolity. She must follow her destiny and be as her mother had been,—like all the women of her blood. Upon the following day she was going to Tangier with her promised husband, Isaac Nuñez. He himself and her relatives had counselled her to have one last interview with the Spaniard, so as to put an end to an equivocal situation that might compromise the honor of a good merchant and destroy the tranquility of a peaceful man. They would marry at Tangier, where her fiancé's family lived; perhaps they would remain there; perhaps they would journey to South America and resume business there. At any rate, their love, their sweet adventure, their divine dream, was ended forever.

"Forever!" murmured Luis in a muffled voice. "Say it again. I hear it from your lips, yet I can't believe my ears. Say it once more. I wish to make sure."

His voice was filled with supplication but at the same time his clenched hand and his threatening glance terrified Luna, who opened her eyes wide and pressed her lips tightly together, as if restraining a sob. The Jewess seemed to grow old in the shadows.

The fiery bird of twilight flashed through the air with its fluttering of red wings. Closely following came a thunderclap that made the houses and ground tremble.... The sunset gun! Aguirre, in his agony, could see in his mind's eye a high wall of crags, flying gulls, the foamy, roaring sea, a misty evening light, the same as that which now enveloped them.

"Do you remember, Luna? Do you remember?"…

The roll of drums sounded from a near-by street, accompanied by the shrill notes of the fife and the deep boom of the bass drum, drowning with its belligerent sound the mystic, ethereal chants that seemed to filter through the walls of the temple. It was the evening patrol on its way to close the gates of the town. The soldiers, clad in uniforms of greyish yellow, marched by, in time with the tune from their instruments, while above their cloth helmets waved the arms of the gymnast who was deafening the street with his blows upon the drum head.

The two waited for the noisy patrol to pass. As the soldiers disappeared in the distance the melodies from the celestial choir inside the church returned slowly to the ears of the listeners.

The Spaniard was abject, imploring, passing from his threatening attitude to one of humble supplication.

"Luna… Lunita! What you say is not true. It cannot be. To separate like this? Don't listen to any of them. Follow the dictates of your heart. There is still a chance for us to be happy. Instead of going off with that man whom you do not love, whom you surely cannot love, flee with me."