Mare Nostrum (Our Sea)

CHAPTER VIII

THE YOUNG TELEMACHUS

Whenever the Mare Nostrum returned to Barcelona, Esteban Ferragut had always felt as dazzled as though a gorgeous stained glass window had opened upon his obscure and monotonous life as the son of the family.

He now no longer wandered along the harbor admiring from afar the great transatlantic liners in front of the monument of Christopher Columbus, nor the cargo steamers that were lined up along the commercial docks. An important boat was going to be his absolute property for some weeks, while its captain and officers were passing the time on land with their families. Toni, the mate, was the only one who slept aboard. Many of the seamen had begged permission to live in the city, and so the steamer had been entrusted to the guardianship of Uncle Caragol with half a dozen men for the daily cleaning. The little Ferragut used to play that he was the captain of the Mare Nostrum and would pace the bridge, pretending that a great tempest was coming up, and examine the nautical instrument with the gravity of an expert. Sometimes he used to race through all the habitable parts of the boat, climbing down to the holds that, wide open, were being ventilated, waiting for their cargo; and finally he would clamber into the ship's gig, untying it from the landing in order to row in it for a few hours, with even more satisfaction than in the light skiffs of the Regatta Club.

His visits always ended in the kitchen, invited there by Uncle Caragol, who was accustomed to treat him with fraternal familiarity. If the youthful oarsman was perspiring greatly…. "A refresquet?" And the chef would prepare his sweet mixture that made men, after one gulp, fall into the haziness of intoxication.

Esteban esteemed highly the "refrescos" of the cook. His imagination, excited by the frequent reading of novels of travel, had made him conceive a type of heroic, gallant, dashing sailor—a regular swash-buckler capable of swallowing by the pitcherful the most rousing drinks without moving an eyelid. He wanted to be that kind; every good sailor ought to drink.

Although on land he was not acquainted with other liquors than those innocent and over-sweet ones kept by his mother for family fiestas, once he trod the deck of a vessel he felt the necessity for alcoholic liquids so as to make it evident that he was entirely a man. "There wasn't in the whole world a drink that could do him any harm…." And after a second "refresco" from Uncle Caragol, he became submersed in a placid nirvana, seeing everything rose-colored and considerably enlarged,—the sea, the nearby boats, the docks, and Montjuich in the background.

The cook, looking at him affectionately with his bleared eyes, believed that he must have bounded back a dozen years and be still in Valencia, talking with that other Ferragut boy who was running away from the university in order to row in the harbor. He almost came to believe that he had lived twice.

He always listened patiently to the lad's complaints, interrupting him with solemn counsels. This fifteen-year-old Ferragut appeared discontented with life. He was a man and he had to live with women—his mother and two nieces, who were always making laces,—just as in other times his mother had been the lace-making companion of her mother-in-law, Doña Cristina. He wanted to be a seaman and they were obliging him to study the uninteresting courses leading to a bachelor's degree. It was scarcely likely, was it, that a captain would have to know Latin?… He wanted to bring his student life to an end so as to become a pilot and continue practicing on the bridge, beside his father. Perhaps at thirty years of age, he might achieve the command of the Mare Nostrum or some similar boat.

Meanwhile the lure of the sea dragged him far from the classroom, prompting him to visit Uncle Caragol at the very hour that his professors were calling the roll and noting the students' absence.

The old man and his protégé used to betake themselves in the galley with the uneasy conscience of the guilty. Steps and voices on deck always changed their topic of conversation. "Hide yourself!" and Esteban would dodge under the table or hide in the provision-closet while the cook sallied forth with a seraphic countenance to meet the recent arrival.

Sometimes it was Toni, and the boy would then dare to come out, relying on his silence; for Toni liked him, too, and approved of his aversion to books.

If it was the captain who was coming to the boat for a few moments, Caragol would talk with him, obstructing the door with his bulk at the same time that he was smiling maliciously.

For Esteban the two most wonderful things in all the world were the sea and his father. All those romantic heroes that had come from the pages of novels to take their place in his imagination had the face and ways of Captain Ferragut.

From babyhood he had seen his mother weeping occasionally in resigned sadness. Years later, recognizing with the precocity of a little-watched boy the relations that exist between men and women, he suspected that all these tears must be caused by the flirtations and infidelities of the distant sailor.

He adored his mother with the passion of an only and spoiled child, but he admired the captain no less, excusing every fault that he might commit. His father was the bravest and handsomest man in all the world.

And when rummaging one day through the drawers in his father's stateroom, he chanced upon various photographs having the names of women from foreign countries, the lad's admiration was greater still. Everybody must have been madly in love with the captain of the Mare Nostrum. Ay! No matter what he might do when he became a man, he could never hope to equal this triumphant creature who had given him existence….

When the boat, on its return from Naples, arrived at Barcelona without its owner, Ferragut's son did not feel any surprise.

Toni, who was always a man of few words, was very lavish with them on the present occasion. Captain Ferragut had remained behind because of important business, but he would not be long in returning. His second was looking for him at any moment. Perhaps he would make the trip by land, in order to arrive sooner.

Esteban was astounded to see that his mother did not accept this absence as an insignificant event. The good lady appeared greatly troubled and her eyes filled with tears. Her feminine instinct made her suspect something ominous in her husband's delay.

In the afternoon, when her old lover, the professor, visited her as usual, the two talked slowly with guarded words but with eyes of understanding and long intervals of silence.

When Don Pedro reached the height of his glorious career, the possession of a professorship in the institute of Barcelona, he used to visit Cinta every afternoon, passing an hour and a half in her parlor with chronometric exactitude. Never did the slightest impure thought agitate the professor. The past had fallen into oblivion…. But he needed to see daily the captain's wife weaving laces with her two little nieces, as he had seen Ferragut's widow years before.

He informed them of the most important events in Barcelona and in the entire world; they would comment together on the future of Esteban, and the former suitor used to listen rapturously to her sweet voice, conceding great importance to the details of domestic economy or descriptions of religious fiestas, solely because it was she who was recounting them.

Many times they would remain in a long silence. Don Pedro represented patience, even temper, and silent respect, in that tranquil and immaculate house which lost its monastic calm only when its head presented himself there for a few days between voyages.

Cinta had accustomed herself to the professor's visits. At half-past three by the clock his footsteps could always be heard in the passageway.

If any afternoon he did not come, the sweet Penelope was greatly disappointed.

"I wonder what can be the matter with Don Pedro?" she would ask her nieces uneasily.

She oftentimes asked this question of her son; but Esteban, without exactly hating the visitor, appreciated him very slightly.

Don Pedro belonged to that group of gentlemen at the Institute whom the government paid to annoy youth with their explanations and their examinations. He still remembered the two years that he had passed in his course, as in the torture chamber, enduring the torments of Latin. Besides that, the professor was a timid man who was always afraid of catching cold, and who never dared to venture into the street on cloudy days without an umbrella. Let people talk to him about courageous men!

"I don't know," he would reply to his mother. "Perhaps he's gone to bed with seven kerchiefs on his head."

When Don Pedro returned, the house recovered its normality of a quiet and well-regulated clock. Doña Cinta, after many consultations, had come to believe his collaboration indispensable. The professor mildly supplemented the authority of the traveling husband, and took it upon himself to represent the head of the family in all outside matters…. Many times Ferragut's wife would be awaiting him with impatience in order to ask his mature counsel, and he would emit his opinion in a slow voice after long reflection.

Esteban found it intolerable that this gentleman, who was no more than a distant relative of his grandmother, should meddle in the affairs of the house, pretending to oversee him as though he were his father. But it irritated him still more to see him in a good humor and trying to be funny. It made him furious to hear his mother called "Penelope" and himself "the young Telemachus."… "Stupid, tedious old bore!"

The young Telemachus was not slow to wrath nor vengeance. From babyhood he had interrupted his play in order to "work" in the reception room near to the hatrack by the door. And the poor professor on his departure would find his hat crown dented in or its nap roughened up, or he would sally home innocently carrying spitballs on the skirts of his overcoat.

Now the boy contented himself with simply ignoring the existence of the family friend, passing in front of him without recognizing him and only greeting him when his mother ordered him to do so.

The day in which he brought the news of the return of the ship without its captain, Don Pedro made a longer visit than usual. Cinto shed two tears upon the lace, but had to stop weeping, vanquished by the good sense of her counselor.

"Why weep and get your mind overwrought with so many suppositions without foundation?… What you ought to do, my daughter, is to call in this Toni who is mate of the vessel; he must know all about it…. Perhaps he may tell you the truth."

Esteban was told to hunt him up the following day, and he quickly noticed Toni's extreme disquietude upon learning that Doña Cinta wished to talk with him. The mate left the boat in lugubrious silence as though he were being taken away to mortal torment: then he began to hum loudly, an indication that he was in deep thought.

The young Telemachus was not able to be present at the interview but he hung around the closed door and succeeded in hearing a few loud words which slipped through the cracks. His mother was speaking with greater frequency. Toni was reiterating in a dull voice the same excuse:—"I don't know. The captain will come at any moment…." But when the mate found himself outside the house, his wrath broke out against himself, against his cursed character that did not know how to lie, against all women bad and good. He believed he had said too much. That lady had the skill of a judge in getting words out of him.

That night, at the supper hour, the mother scarcely opened her mouth. Her fingers communicated a nervous trembling to the plates and forks, and she looked at her son with tragic commiseration as though she foresaw terrible troubles about to burst upon his head. She opposed a desperate silence to Esteban's questions and finally exclaimed:

"Your father is deserting us!… Your father has forgotten us!…"

And she left the dining-room to hide her overflowing tears.

The boy slept rather restlessly, but he slept. The admiration which he always felt for his father and a certain solidarity with the strong examples of his sex made him take little account of these complaints. Matters for women! His mother just didn't know how to be the wife of an extraordinary man like Captain Ferragut. He who was really a man, in spite of his few years, was going to intervene in this affair in order to show up the truth.

When Toni, from the deck of the vessel, saw the lad coming along the wharf the following morning, he was greatly tempted to hide himself…. "If Doña Cinta should call me again in order to question me!…" But he calmed himself with the thought that the boy was probably coming of his own free will to pass a few hours on the Mare Nostrum. Even so, he wished to avoid his presence as though he feared some slip in talking with him, and so pretended that he had work in the hold. Then he left the boat going to visit a friend on a steamer some distance off.

Esteban entered the galley, calling gayly to Uncle Caragol. He wasn't the same, either. His humid and reddish eyes were looking at the child with an extraordinary tenderness. Suddenly he stopped his talk with an expression of uneasiness on his face. He looked uncertainly around him, as though fearing that a precipice might open at his feet.

Never forgetful of the respect due to every visitor in his dominion, he prepared two "refrescos." He was going to treat Esteban for the first time on this return trip. On former days, incredible as it may seem, he had not thought of making even one of his delicious beverages. The return from Naples to Barcelona had been a sad one: the vessel had a funereal air without its master.

For all these reasons, Caragol's hand lavishly measured out the rum until the liquid took on a tobacco tone.

They drank…. The young Telemachus began to talk about his father when the glasses were only half empty, and the cook waved both hands in the air, giving a grunt which signified that he had no wish to bother about the captain's absence.

"Your father will return, Esteban," he added. "He will return but I don't know when. Certainly later than Toni says."

And not wishing to say more, he gulped down the rest of the glass, devoting himself hastily to the confection of the second "refresco" in order to make up for lost time.

Little by little he slipped away from the prudent barrier that was hedging in his verbosity and spoke with his old time abandon; but his flow of words did not exactly convey news.

Caragol preached morality to Ferragut's son,—morality from his standpoint, interrupted by frequent caresses of the glass.

"Esteban, my son, respect your father greatly. Imitate him as a seaman. Be good and just toward the men that you command…. But avoid the females!"

The women!… There was no better theme for his piously drunken eloquence. The world inspired his pity. It was all governed by the infernal attraction exercised by the female of the species. The men were working, struggling, and trying to grow rich and celebrated, all in order to possess one of these creatures.

"Believe me, my son, and do not imitate your father in this respect."

The old man had said too much to back out now and he had to go on, letting out the rest of it, bit by bit. Thus Esteban learned that the captain was enamored with a lady in Naples and that he had remained there pretending business matters, but in reality dominated by this woman's influence.

"Is she pretty?" asked the boy eagerly.

"Very pretty," replied Caragol. "And such odors!… And such a swishing of fine clothes!…"

Telemachus thrilled with contradictory sensations of pride and envy. He admired his father once more, but this admiration only lasted a few seconds. A new idea was taking possession of him while the cook continued:

"He will not come now. I know what these elegant females are, reeking with perfume. They are true demons that dig their nails in when they clutch, and it is necessary to cut off their hands in order to loosen them…. And the boat as useless now as though it were aground, while the others are filling themselves with gold!… Believe me, my son, this is the only truth in the world."

And he concluded by gulping in one draft all that was left in the second glass.

Meanwhile the boy was forming in his mind an idea prompted by his pleasant intoxication. What if he should go to Naples in order to bring his father back!…

At this moment everything seemed possible to him. The world was rose-colored as it always was when he looked at it, glass in hand, near to Uncle Caragol. All obstacles would turn out to be trifling: everything would arrange itself with wonderful facility. Men were able to progress by bounds.

But hours afterward when his thoughts were cleared of their beatific visions, he felt a little fearful when recollecting his absent parent. How would he receive him upon his arrival?… What excuses could he give his father for his presence in Naples?… He trembled, recalling the image of his scowling brow and angry eyes.

On the following day a sudden self-confidence replaced this uneasiness. He recalled the captain as he had seen him many times on the deck of his vessel, telling of his escapades when rowing in the harbor of Barcelona, or commenting to friends on his son's strength and intelligence. The image of the paternal hero now came to his mind with good-humored eyes and a smile passing like a fresh breeze over his face.

He would tell him the whole truth. He would make him understand that he had come to Naples just to take him away with him, like a good comrade who comes to another's rescue in time of danger. Perhaps he might be irritated and give him a blow, but he would eventually accede to his proposition.