Mare Nostrum (Our Sea)

"Come in, Captain."

And the captain was not able to resist the suggestive smile of the cook.

He found himself in a kind of hall similar to the façade with a Gothic fireplace of alabaster imitating oak, great jars of porcelain, pipes the size of walking-sticks, and old armor adorning the walls. Various wood-cuts reproducing modern pictures of Munich alternated with these decorations. Opposite the fireplace William II was displaying one of his innumerable uniforms, resplendent in gold and a gaudy frame.

The house appeared uninhabited. Heavy soft curtains deadened every sound. The corpulent go-between had disappeared with the lightness of an immaterial being, as though swallowed up by the wall. While scowling at the portrait of the Kaiser, the sailor began to feel disquieted in this silence which appeared to him almost hostile…. And he was not carrying arms.

The smiling woman again presented herself with the same slippery smoothness.

"Come in, Don Ulysses."

She had opened a door, and Ferragut on advancing felt that this door was locked behind him.

The first thing that he could see was a window, broader than it was high, of colored glass. A Valkyrie was galloping across it, with lance in rest and floating locks, upon a black steed that was expelling fire through its nostrils. In the diffused light of the stained glass he could distinguish tapestries on the walls and a deep divan with flowered cushions.

A woman arose from the soft depths of this couch, rushing towards Ferragut with outstretched arms. Her impulse was so violent that it made her collide with the captain. Before the feminine embrace could close around him he saw a panting mouth, with avid teeth, eyes tearful with emotion, a smile that was a mixture of love and painful disquietude.

"You!… You!" he stuttered, springing back.

His legs trembled with a shudder of surprise. A cold wave ran down his back.

"Ulysses!" sighed the woman, trying again to fold him in her arms.

"You!… You!" again repeated the sailor in a dull voice.

It was Freya.

He did not know positively what mysterious force dictated his action. It was perhaps the voice of his good counselor, accustomed to speak in his brain in critical instants, which now asserted itself…. He saw instantaneously a ship that was exploding and his son blown to pieces.

"Ah … tal"

He raised his robust arm with his fist clenched like a mace. The voice of prudence kept on giving him orders. "Hard!… No consideration!… This female is shifty." And he struck as though his enemy were a man, without hesitation, without pity, concentrating all his soul in his fist.

The hatred that he was feeling and the recollection of the aggressive resources of the German woman made him begin a second blow, fearing an attack from her and wishing to repel it before it could be made…. But he stopped with his arm raised.

"Ay de mí!…"

The woman had uttered a child-like wail, staggering, swaying upon her feet, with arms drooping, without any attempt at defense whatever…. She reeled from side to side as though she were drunk. Her knees doubled under her, and she fell with the limpness of a bundle of clothes, her head first striking against the cushions of the divan. The rest of her body remained like a rag on the rug.

There was a long silence, interrupted from time to time by groans of pain. Freya was moaning with closed eyes, without coming out of her inertia.

The sailor, scowling with a tragic ugliness, and transported with rage, remained immovable, looking grimly at the fallen creature. He was satisfied with his brutality; it had been an opportune relief; he could breathe better. At the same time he was beginning to feel ashamed of himself. "What have you done, you coward?…" For the first time in his existence he had struck a woman.

He raised his aching right hand to his eyes. One of his fingers was bleeding. Perhaps it had become hooked in her earrings, perhaps a pin at her breast had scratched it. He sucked the blood from the deep scratch, and then forgot the wound in order to gaze again at the body outstretched at his feet.

Little by little he was becoming accustomed to the diffused light of the room. He was already beginning to see objects clearly. His glance rested upon Freya with a look of mingled hatred and remorse.

Her head, sunk in the cushions, presented a pitiful profile. She appeared much older, as though her age had been doubled by her tears. The brutal blow had made her freshness and her marvelous youth flit away with doleful suddenness. Her half-opened eyes were encircled with temporary wrinkles. Her nose had taken on the livid sharpness of the dead; her great mass of hair, reddening under the blow, was disheveled in golden, undulating tangles. Something black was winding through it making streaks upon the silk of the cushion. It was the blood that was dribbling between the heraldic flowers of the embroidery,—blood flowing from the hidden forehead, being absorbed by the dryness of the soft material.

Upon making this discovery, Ferragut felt his shame increasing. He took one step over the extended body, seeking the door. Why was he staying there?… All that he had to do was already done; all that he could say was already said.

"Do not go, Ulysses," sighed a plaintive voice. "Listen to me!… It concerns your life."

The fear that he might get away made her pull herself together with dolorous groans and this movement accelerated the flow of blood…. The pillow continued drinking it in like a thirsty meadow.

An irresistible compassion like that which he might feel for any stranger abandoned in the midst of the street, made the sailor draw back, his eyes fixed on a tall crystal vase which stood upon the floor filled with flowers. With a bang he scattered over the carpet all the springtime bouquet, arranged a little while before by feminine hands with the feverishness of one who counts the minutes and lives on hope.

He moistened his handkerchief in the water of the vase and knelt down beside Freya, raising her head upon the cushion. She let the wound be washed with the abandon of a sick creature, fixing upon her aggressor a pair of imploring eyes, opening now for the first time.

When the blood ceased to flow, forming on the temple a red, coagulated spot, Ferragut tried to raise her up.

"No; leave me so," she murmured. "I prefer to be at your feet. I am your bondslave … your plaything. Beat me more if it will appease your wrath."

She wished to insist upon her humility, offering her lips with the timid kiss of a grateful slave.

"Ah, no!… No!"

To avoid this caress Ulysses stood up suddenly. He again felt intense hatred toward this woman, who little by little was appealing to his senses. Upon stopping the flow of blood his compassion had become extinguished.

She, guessing his thoughts, felt obliged to speak.

"Do with me what you will…. I shall not complain. You are the first man who has ever struck me…. And I have not defended myself! I shall not defend myself though you strike me again…. Had it been any one else, I would have replied blow for blow; but you!… I have done you so much wrong!…"

She was silent for a few moments, kneeling before him in a supplicating attitude with her body resting upon her heels. She reached out her arms while speaking with a monotonous and sorrowful voice, like the specters in the apparitions of the theater.

"I have hesitated a long time before seeing you," she continued. "I feared your wrath; I was sure that in the first moment you would let yourself be overpowered by your anger and I was terrified at the thought of the interview…. I have spied upon you ever since I knew that you were in Barcelona; I have waited near your home; many times I have seen you through the doorway of a café, and I have taken my pen to write to you. But I feared that you would not come, upon recognizing my handwriting, or that you would pay no attention to a letter in another hand…. This morning in the Rambla I could no longer contain myself. And so I sent that woman to you and I have passed some cruel hours fearing that you would not come…. At last I see you and your violence makes no difference to me. Thank you, thank you many times for having come!"

Ferragut remained motionless with distracted glance, as though he did not hear her voice.

"It was necessary to see you," she continued. "It concerns your very existence. You have set yourself in opposition to a tremendous power that can crush you. Your ruin is decided upon. You are one lone man and you have awakened the suspicion, without knowing it, of a world-wide organization…. The blow has not yet fallen upon you, but it is going to fall at any moment, perhaps this very day; I cannot find out all about it…. For this reason it was necessary to see you in order that you should put yourself on the defensive, in order that you should flee, if necessary."

The captain, smiling scornfully, shrugged his shoulders as he always did when people spoke to him of danger, and counseled prudence. Besides, he couldn't believe a single thing that woman said.

"It's a lie!" he said dully. "It's all a lie!…

"No, Ulysses: listen to me. You do not know the interest that you inspire in me. You are the only man that I have ever loved… Do not smile at me in that way: your incredulity terrifies me…. Remorse is now united to my poor love. I have done you so much wrong!… I hate all men. I long to cause them all the harm that I can; but there exists one exception: you!… All my desires of happiness are for you. My dreams of the future always have you as the central personage…. Do you want me to remain indifferent upon seeing you in danger?… No, I am not lying…. Everything that I tell you this afternoon is the truth: I shall never be able to lie to you. It distresses me so that my artifices and my falsity should have brought trouble upon you…. Strike me again, treat me as the worst of women, but believe what I tell you; follow my counsel."

The sailor persisted disdainfully in his indifferent attitude. His hands were trembling impatiently. He was going away. He did not wish to hear any more…. Had she hunted him out just to frighten him with imaginary dangers?…

"What have you done, Ulysses?… What have you done?" Freya kept saying desperately.

She knew all that had occurred in the port of Marseilles, and she also knew well the infinite number of agents that were working for the greater glory of Germany. Von Kramer, from his prison, had made known the name of his informant. She lamented the captain's vehement frankness.

"I understand your hatred; you cannot forget the torpedoing of the Californian…. But you should have denounced von Kramer without letting him suspect from whom the accusation came…. You have acted like a madman; yours is an impulsive character that does not fear the morrow."

Ulysses made a scornful gesture. He did not like subterfuges and treachery. His way of doing was the better one. The only thing that he lamented was that that assassin of the sea might still be living, not having been able to kill him with his own hands.

"Perhaps he may not be living still," she continued. "The French Council of War has condemned him to death. We do not know whether the sentence has been carried out; but they are going to shoot him any moment, and every one in our circle knows that you are the true author of his misfortune."

She became terrified upon thinking of the accumulated hatred brought about by this deed, and upon the approaching vengeance. In Berlin the name of Ferragut was the object of special attention; in every nation of the earth, the civilian battalions of men and women engaged in working for Germany's triumph were repeating his name at this moment. The commanders of the submarines were passing along information regarding his ship and his person. He had dared to attack the greatest empire in the world. He, one lone man, a simple merchant captain, depriving the kaiser of one of his most valiant, valuable servants!

"What have you done, Ulysses?… What have you done?" she wailed again.

And Ferragut began to recognize in her voice a genuine interest in his person, a terrible fear of the dangers which she believed were threatening him.

"Here, in your very own country, their vengeance will overtake you. Flee! I don't know where you can go to get rid of them, but believe me…. Flee!"

The sailor came out of his scornful indifference. Anger was lending a hostile gleam to his glance. He was furious to think that those foreigners could pursue him in his own country; it was as though they were attacking him beside his own hearth. National pride augmented his wrath.

"Let them come," he said. "I'd like to see them this very day."

And he looked around, clenching his fists as though these innumerable and unknown enemies were about to come out from the walls.

"They are also beginning to consider me as an enemy," continued the woman. "They do not say so, because it is a common thing with us to hide our thoughts; but I suspect the coldness that is surrounding me…. The doctor knows that I love you the same as before, in spite of the wrath that she feels against you. The others are talking of your 'treason' and I protest because I cannot stand such a lie…. Why are you a traitor?… You are not one of our clan. You are a father who longs to avenge himself. We are the real traitors:—I, who entangled you in the fatal adventure,—they, who pushed me toward you, in order to take advantage of your services."

Their life in Naples surged up in her memory and she felt it necessary to explain her acts.

"You have not been able to understand me. You are ignorant of the truth…. When I met you on the road to Paestum, you were a souvenir of my past, a fragment of my youth, of the time in which I knew the doctor only vaguely, and was not yet compromised in the service of 'information.'… From the very beginning your love and enthusiasm made an impression upon me. You represented an interesting diversion with your Spanish gallantry, waiting for me outside the hotel in order to besiege me with your promises and vows. I was greatly bored during the enforced waiting at Naples. You also found yourself obliged to wait, and sought in me an agreeable recreation…. One day I came to understand that you truly were interesting me greatly, as no other man had ever interested me…. I suspected that I was going to fall in love with you."

"It's a lie!… It's a lie," murmured Ferragut spitefully.

"Say what you will, but that was the way of it. We love according to the place and the moment. If we had met on some other occasion, we might have seen each other for a few hours, no more, each following his own road without further consideration. We belong to different worlds…. But we were mobilized in the same country, oppressed by the tedium of waiting, and what had to be … was. I am telling you the entire truth: if you could know what it has cost me to avoid you!…

"In the mornings, on arising in the room in my hotel, my first motion was to look through the curtains in order to convince myself that you were waiting for me in the street. 'There is my devoted: there is my sweetheart!' Perhaps you had slept badly thinking about me, while I was feeling my soul reborn within me, the soul of a girl of twenty, enthusiastic and artless…. My first impulse was to come down and join you, going with you along the gulf shores like two lovers out of a novel. Then reflection would come to my rescue. My past would come tumbling into my mind like an old bell fallen from its tower. I had forgotten that past, and its recurrence deafened me with its overwhelming jangle vibrating with memories. 'Poor man!… Into what a world of compromises and entanglements I am going to involve him!… No! No!' And I fled from you with the cunning of a mischievous schoolgirl, coming out from the hotel when you had gone off for a few moments, at other times doubling a corner at the very instant that you turned your eyes away…. I only permitted myself to approach coldly and ironically when it was impossible to avoid meeting you…. And afterwards, in the doctor's house, I used to talk about you, every instant, laughing with her over these romantic gallantries."

Ferragut was listening gloomily, but with growing concentration. He foresaw the explanation of many hitherto incomprehensible acts. A curtain was going to be withdrawn from the past showing everything behind it in a new light.

"The doctor would laugh, but in spite of my jesting she would assure me just the same: 'You are in love with this man; this Don José interests you. Be careful, Carmen!' And the queer thing was that she did not take amiss my infatuation, especially when you consider that she was the enemy of every passion that could not be made directly subservient to our work…. She told the truth; I was in love. I recognized it the morning the overwhelming desire to go to the Aquarium took possession of me. I had passed many days without seeing you: I was living outside of the hotel in the doctor's house in order not to encounter my inamorato. And that morning I got up very sad, with one fixed thought: 'Poor captain!… Let us give him a little happiness.' I was sick that day…. Sick because of you! Now I understood it all. We saw each other in the Aquarium and it was I who kissed you at the same time that I was longing for the extermination of all men…. Of all men except you!"

She made a brief pause, raising her eyes toward him, in order to take in the effect of her words.

"You remember our luncheon in the restaurant of Vomero; you remember how I begged you to go away, leaving me to my fate. I had a foreboding of the future. I foresaw that it was going to be fatal for you. How could I join a direct and frank life like yours to my existence as an adventuress, mixed up in so many unconfessable compromises?… But I was in love with you. I wished to save you by leaving you, and at the same time I was afraid of not seeing you again. The night that you irritated me with the fury of your desires and I stupidly defended myself, as though it were an outrage, concentrating on your person the hatred which all men inspire in me,—that night, alone in my bed, I wept. I wept at the thought that I had lost you forever and at the same time I felt satisfied with myself because thus I was freeing you from my baleful influence…. Then von Kramer came. We were in need of a boat and a man. The doctor spoke, proud of her penetration which had made her suspect in you an available asset. They gave me orders to go in search of you, to regain the mastery over your self-control. My first impulse was to refuse, thinking of your future. But the sacrifice was sweet; selfishness directs our actions … and I sought you! You know the rest."

She became silent, remaining in a pensive attitude, as though relishing this period of her recollection, the most pleasing of her existence.

"Upon going over to the steamer for you," she continued a few moments afterward, "I understood just what you represented in my life. What need I had of you!… The doctor was preoccupied with the Italian events. I was only counting the days, finding that they were passing by with more slowness than the others. One … two … three … 'My adored sailor, my amorous shark, is going to come…. He is going to come!' And what came suddenly, while we were still believing it far away, was the blow of the war, rudely separating us. The doctor was cursing the Italians, thinking of Germany; I was cursing them, thinking of you, finding myself obliged to follow my friend, preparing for flight in two hours, through fear of the mob…. My only satisfaction was in learning that we were coming to Spain. The doctor was promising herself to do great things here…. I was thinking that in no place would it be easier for me to find you again."

She had gained a little more bodily strength. Her hands were touching Ferragut's knees, longing to embrace them, yet not daring to do so, fearing that he might repel her and overcome that tragic inertia which permitted him to listen to her.

"When in Bilboa I learned of the torpedoing of the Californian and of the death of your son…. I shall not talk about that; I wept, I wept bitterly, hiding myself from the doctor. From that time on I hated her. She rejoiced in the event, passing indifferently over your name. You no longer existed for her, because she was no longer able to make use of you…. I wept for you, for your son whom I did not know, and also for myself, remembering my blame in the matter. Since that day I have been another woman…. Then we came to Barcelona and I have passed months and months awaiting this moment."

Her former passion was reflected in her eyes. A flicker of humble love lit up her bruised countenance.

"We established ourselves in this house which belongs to a German electrician, a friend of the doctor's. Whenever she went away on a trip leaving me free, my steps would invariably turn to the harbor. I was waiting to see your ship. My eyes followed the seamen sympathetically, thinking that I could see in all of them something of your person…. 'Some day he will come,' I would say to myself. You know how selfish love is! I gradually forgot the death of your son…. Besides, I am not the one who is really guilty: there are others. I have been deceived just as you have been. 'He is going to come, and we shall be happy again!'… Ay! If this room could speak … if this divan on which I have dreamed so many times could talk!… I was always arranging some flowers in a vase, making believe that you were going to come. I was always fixing myself up a little bit, imagining it was for you…. I was living in your country, and it was natural that you should come. Suddenly the paradise that I was imagining vanished into smoke. We received the news, I don't know how, of the imprisonment of von Kramer, and that you had been his accuser. The doctor anathematized me, making me responsible for everything. Through me she had known you, and that was enough to make her include me in her indignation. All our band began to plan for your death, longing to have it accompanied with the most atrocious tortures…."

Ferragut interrupted her. His brow was furrowed as though dominated by a tenacious idea…. Perhaps he was not listening to her.

"Where is the doctor?"…

The tone of the question was disquieting. He clenched his fists, looking around him as though awaiting the appearance of the imposing dame. His attitude was just like that which had accompanied his attack on Freya.

"I don't know where she's traveling," said his companion. "She is probably in Madrid, in San Sebastian, or in Cadiz. She goes off very frequently. She has friends everywhere…. And I have ventured to ask you here simply because I am alone."

And she described the life that she was leading in this retreat. For the time being her former protector was letting her remain in inaction, abstaining from giving her any work whatever. She was doing everything herself, avoiding all intermediaries. What had happened to von Kramer had made her so jealous and suspicious that when she needed aids, she admitted only her compatriots living in Barcelona.

A ferocious and determined band, made up of refugees from the South American republics, parasites from the coast cities or vagabonds from the inland forests, had grouped itself around her. At their head, as message-bearer for the doctor, was Karl, the secretary that Ferragut had seen in the great old house of the district of Chiaja.

This man, in spite of his oily aspect, had several bloody crimes in his life history. He was a worthy superintendent of the group of adventurers inflamed by patriotic enthusiasm who were forwarding supplies to the submarines in the Spanish Mediterranean. They all knew Captain Ferragut, because of the affair at Marseilles, and they were talking about his person with gloomy reticence.

"Through them I learned of your arrival," she continued. "They are spying upon you, waiting for a favorable moment. Who knows if they have not already followed you here?… Ulysses, flee; your life is seriously threatened."

The captain again shrugged his shoulders with an expression of disgust.

"Flee, I repeat it!… And if you can, if I arouse in you a little compassion, if you are not completely indifferent to me … take me with you!…"

Ferragut began to wonder if all this preamble was merely a prelude to this final request. The unexpected demand produced an impression of scandalized amazement. Was he to flee with her, with the one who had done him so much harm?… Again unite his life to hers, knowing her as he now knew her!…