Mare Nostrum (Our Sea)

The proposition was so absurd that the captain smiled sardonically.

"I am just as much in danger as you are," continued Freya with a despairing accent. "I do not know exactly what the danger is that threatens me, nor whence it may come. But I suspect it, I foresee it hanging over my head…. I am of absolutely no use to them now; I no longer have their confidence, and I know too many things. Since I possess too many secrets for them to give me up, leaving me in peace, they have agreed to suppress me; I am sure of that. I can read it in the eyes of the one who was my friend and protector…. You cannot abandon me, Ulysses. You will not desire my death."

Ferragut waxed indignant before these supplications, finally breaking his disdainful silence.

"Comedienne!… All a lie!… Inventions to entangle yourself with me, making me intervene again in the network of your life, compromising me again in your work of detestable surveillance!…"

He was now taking the right path. His desire for vengeance had placed him among Germany's adversaries. He was lamenting his former blindness and was satisfied with his new interests. He was making no secret of his conduct. He was serving the Allies.

"And that is the reason you are hunting me up; that is the reason that you have arranged this interview, probably at the instigation of your friend, the doctor. You wish to employ me for a second time as the secret instrument of your espionage. 'Captain Ferragut is such an enamored simpleton,' you have said to one another. 'We have nothing to do but to make an appeal to his chivalry….' And you wish to live with me, perhaps to accompany me on my voyages, to follow my existence in order to reveal my secrets to your compatriots that I may again appear as a traitor. Ah, you hussy!…"

This supposed treason again aroused his homicidal wrath. He raised his arm and foot, and was about to strike and crush the kneeling woman. But her passive humiliation, her complete lack of resistance, stopped him.

"No, Ulysses … listen to me!"

She tried her utmost to prove her sincerity. She was afraid of her own people; she could see them now in a new light, and they filled her with horror. Her manner of looking at things had changed radically. Her remorse, on thinking of what she had done, was making her a martyr. Her conscience was beginning to feel the wholesome transformation of repentant women who were formerly great sinners. How could she wash her soul of her past crimes?… She had not even the consolation of that patriotic faith, bloody and ferocious though it was, which inflamed the doctor and her assistants.

She had been reflecting a great deal. For her there were no longer Germans, English, nor French; there only existed men; men with mothers, with wives, with daughters. And her woman's soul was horrified at the thought of the combats and the killings. She hated war. She had experienced her first remorse upon learning of the death of Ferragut's son.

"Take me with you," she urged. "If you do not take me out of my world I shall not know how to get away from it…. I am poor. In these last years, the doctor has supported me; I do not know any way of earning my living and I am accustomed to living well. Poverty inspires me with greater fear than death. You will be able to maintain me; I will accept of you whatever you wish to give me; I will be your handmaiden. On a boat they must need the care and well-ordered supervision of a woman…. Life locks its doors against me; I am alone."

The captain smiled with cruel irony.

"I divine what your smile means. I know what you wish to say to me…. I can see myself; you believe without doubt that such has been my former life. No,… no! You are mistaken. I have not been that. There has to be a special predisposition, a certain talent for feigning what I do not feel…. I have tried to sell myself, and I cannot, I cannot avail myself of that. I embitter the life of men when they do not interest me; I am their adversary. I hate them and they flee from me."

But the sailor prolonged his atrociously sinister smile.

"It's a lie," he said again, "all a lie. Make no further effort…. You will not convince me."

As though suddenly reanimated with new force, she rose to her feet:—her face on a level with Ferragut's eyes. He saw her left temple with the torn skin; the spot caused by the blow extended around one eye, reddened and swollen. On contemplating his barbarous handiwork, remorse again tormented him.

"Listen, Ulysses; you do not know my true existence. I have always lied to you; I have eluded all your investigations in our happy days. I wished to keep my former life a secret … to forget it. Now I must tell you the truth, the actual truth, just as though I were going to die. When you know it, you will be less cruel."

But her listener did not wish to hear it. He protested in advance with a ferocious incredulity.

"Lies!… new lies! I wonder when you will ever stop your inventions!"

"I am not a German woman," she continued without listening to him. "Neither is my name Freya Talberg…. It is my nombre de guerre, my name as an adventuress. Talberg was the professor who accompanied me to the Andes, and who was not my husband, either…. My true name is Beatrice…. My mother was an Italian, a Florentine; my father was from Trieste."

This revelation did not interest Ferragut.

"One fraud more!" he said. "Another novel!… Keep on making them up."

The woman was in despair. She raised her hands above her head, twisting the interlaced fingers. Fresh tears welled up in her eyes.

"Ay! How can I succeed in making you believe me?… What oath can I take to convince you that I am telling you the truth?…"

The captain's impassive air gave her to understand that all such extremes would be unavailing. There was no oath that could possibly convince him. Even though she should tell the truth, he would not believe her.

She went on with her story, not wishing to protest against this impassable wall.

"My father also was of Italian origin but was Austrian because of the place of his birth…. Furthermore, the Germanic empires always inspired him with a blind enthusiasm. He was among those who detest their native land, and see all the virtues in the northern people.

"Inventor of marvelous business schemes, financial promoter of colossal enterprises, he had passed his existence besieging the directors of the great banking establishments and having interviews in the lobbies of the government departments. Eternally on the eve of surprising combinations that were bound to bring him dozens of millions, he had always lived in luxurious poverty, going from hotel to hotel—always the best—with his wife and his only daughter.

"You know nothing about such a life, Ulysses; you come from a tranquil and well-to-do family. Your people have never known existence in the Palace Hotels, nor have you known difficulties in meeting the monthly account, managing to have it included with those of the former months with an unlimited credit."

As a child she had seen her mother weeping in their extravagant hotel apartment while the father was talking with the aspect of an inspired person, announcing that the next week he was going to clear a million dollars. The wife, convinced by the eloquence of her remarkable husband, would finally dry her tears, powder her face, and adorn herself with her pearls and her blonde laces of problematic value. Then she would descend to the magnificent hall, filled with perfumes, with the hum of conversation and the discreet wailings of the violins, in order to take tea with her friends in the hotel,—formidable millionaires from the two hemispheres who vaguely suspected the existence of an infirmity known as poverty, but incapable of imagining that it might attack persons of their own world.

Meanwhile the little girl used to play in the hotel garden of the Palace Hotel with other children dressed up and adorned like luxurious and fragile dolls, each one worth many millions.

"From my childhood," continued Freya, "I had been a companion of women who are now celebrated for their riches in New York, Paris, and in London. I have been on familiar terms with great heiresses that are to-day, through their marriages, duchesses and even princesses of the blood royal. Many of them have since passed by me, without recognizing me, and I have said nothing, knowing that the equality of childhood is no more than a vague recollection…."

Thus she had grown into womanhood. A few of her father's casual bargains had permitted them to continue this existence of brilliant and expensive poverty. The promoter had considered such environment indispensable for his future negotiations. Life in the most expensive hotels, an automobile by the month, gowns designed by the greatest modistes for his wife and daughter, summers at the most fashionable resorts, winter-skating in Switzerland,—all these luxuries were for him but a kind of uniform of respectability that kept him in the world of the powerful, permitting him to enter everywhere.

"This existence molded me forever, and has influenced the rest of my life. Dishonor, death, anything is to me preferable to poverty…. I, who have no fear of danger, become a coward at the mere thought of that!"

The mother died, credulous and sensuous, worn out with expecting a solid fortune that never arrived. The daughter continued with her father, becoming the type of young woman who lives among men from hotel to hotel, always somewhat masculine in her attitude;—a half-way virgin who knows everything, is not frightened at anything, guards ferociously the integrity of her sex, calculating just what it may be worth, and adoring wealth as the most powerful divinity on earth.

Finding herself upon her father's death with no other fortune than her gowns and a few artistic gems of scant value, she had coldly decided upon her destiny.

"In our world there is no other virtue than that of money. The girls of the people surrender themselves less easily than a young woman accustomed to luxury having as her only fortune some knowledge of the piano, of dancing, and a few languages…. We yield our body as though fulfilling a material function, without shame and without regret. It is a simple matter of business. The only thing that matters is to preserve the former life with all its conveniences … not to come down."

She passed hastily over her recollection of this period of her existence. An old acquaintance of her father, an old trader of Vienna, had been the first. Then she felt romantic flutterings which even the coldest and most positive women do not escape. She believed that she had fallen in love with a Dutch officer, a blonde Apollo who used to skate with her in Saint Moritz. This had been her only husband. Finally she had become bored with the colonial drowsiness of Batavia and had returned to Europe, breaking off her marriage in order to renew her life in the great hotels, passing the winter season at the most luxurious resorts.

"Ay, money!… In no social plane was its power so evident as that in which she was accustomed to dwell. In the Palace Hotels she had met women of soldierly aspect and common hands, smoking at all hours, with their feet up and the white triangle of their petticoats stretched over the seat. They were like the prostitutes waiting at the doors of their huts. How were they ever permitted to live there!… Nevertheless, the men bowed before them like slaves, or followed as suppliants these creatures who talked with unction of the millions inherited from their fathers, of their formidable wealth of industrial origin which had enabled them to buy noble husbands and then give themselves up to their natural tastes as fast, coarse women.

"I never had any luck…. I am too haughty for that kind of thing. Men find me ill-humored, argumentative, and nervous. Perhaps I was born to be the mother of a family…. Who knows but what I might have been otherwise if I had lived in your country?"

Her announcement of her religious veneration for money took on an accent of hate. Poor and well-educated girls, if afraid of the misery of poverty, had no other recourse than prostitution. They lacked a dowry,—that indispensable requisite in many civilized families for honorable marriage and home-making.

Accursed poverty!… It had weighed upon her life like a fatality. The men who had appeared good at first afterwards became poisoned, turning into egoists and wretches. Doctor Talberg, on returning from America, had abandoned her in order to marry a young and rich woman, the daughter of a trader, a senator from Hamburg. Others had equally exploited her youth, taking their share of her gayety and beauty only to marry, later, women who had merely the attractiveness of a great fortune.

She had finally come to hate them all, desiring their extermination, exasperated at the very thought that she needed them to live and could never free herself from this slavery. Trying to be independent, she had taken up the stage.

"I have danced. I have sung; but my successes were always because I was a woman. Men followed after me, desiring the female, and ridiculing the actress. Besides—the life behind the scenes!… A white-slave market with a name on the play-bills…. What exploitation!…"

The desire of freeing herself from all this had led her to make friends with the doctor, accepting her propositions. It seemed to her more honorable to serve a great nation, to be a secret functionary, laboring in the shadow for its grandeur. Besides, at the beginning she was fascinated by the novelty of the work, the adventures on risky missions, the proud consideration that with her espionage she was weaving the web of the future, preparing the history of time to come.

Here also she had, from the very first, stumbled upon sexual slavery. Her beauty was an instrument for sounding the depths of consciences, a key for opening secrets; and this servitude had turned out worse than the former ones, on account of its being irremediable,—she had tried to divorce herself from her life of tantalizing tourist and theatrical woman; but whoever enters into the secret service can nevermore go from it. She learns too many things; slowly she gains a comprehension of important mysteries. The agent becomes a slave of her functions; she is confined within them as a prisoner, and with every new act adds a new stone to the wall that is separating her from liberty.

"You know the rest of my life," she continued. "The obligation of obeying the doctor, of seducing men in order to snatch their secrets from them, made me hate them with a deadly aggressiveness…. But you came. You, who are so good and generous! You who sought me with the enthusiastic simplicity of a growing boy, making me turn back a page in my life, as though I were still only in my teens and being courted for the first time!… Besides, you are not a selfish person. You gave with noble enthusiasm. I believe that if we had known each other in our early youth you would never have deserted me in order to make yourself rich by marrying some one else. I resisted you at first, because I loved you and did not wish to do you harm…. Afterwards, the mandates of my superiors and my passion made me forget these scruples…. I gave myself up. I was the 'fatal woman,' as always; I brought you misfortune…. Ulysses! My love!… Let us forget; there is no use in remembering the past. I know your heart so well, and finding myself in danger, I appeal to it. Save me! Take me with you!…"

As she was standing opposite him, she had only to raise her hands in order to put them on his shoulders, starting the beginning of an embrace.

Ferragut remained insensible to the caress. His immobility repelled these pleadings. Freya had traveled much through the world, had gone through shameful adventures, and would know how to free herself by her own efforts without the necessity of complicating him again in her net. The story that she had just told was nothing to him but a web of misrepresentations.

"It is all false," he said in a heavy voice. "I do not believe you. I never shall believe you…. Each time that we meet you tell me a new tale…. Who are you?… When do you tell the truth,—all the truth at once?… You fraud!"

Insensible to his insults, she continued speaking anxiously of her future, as though perceiving the mysterious dangers which were surrounding her.

"Where shall I go if you abandon me?… If I remain in Spain, I continue under the doctor's domination. I cannot return to the empires where my life has been passed; all the roads are closed and in those lands my slavery would be reborn…. Neither can I go to France or to England; I am afraid of my past. Any one of my former achievements would be enough to make them shoot me: I deserve nothing less. Besides, the vengeance of my own people fills me with terror. I know the methods of the 'service,' when they find it necessary to rid themselves of an inconvenient agent who is in the enemy's territory. The 'service' itself denounces him, voluntarily making a stupid move in order that some documents may go astray, sending a compromising card with a false address in order that it may fall into the hands of the authorities of the country. What shall I do if you do not aid me?… Where can I flee?…"

Ulysses decided to reply, moved to pity by her desperation. The world was large. She could go and live in the republics of America.

She did not accept the advice. She had had the same thought, but the uncertain future made her afraid.

"I am poor: I have scarcely enough to pay my traveling expenses…. The 'service' recompenses well at the start. Afterwards when it has us surely in its clutches because of our past, it gives us only what is necessary in order to live with a certain freedom. What can I ever do in those lands?… Must I pass the rest of my existence selling myself for bread?… I will not do it. I would rather die first!"

This desperate affirmation of her poverty made Ferragut smile sarcastically. He looked at the necklace of pearls everlastingly reposing on the admirable cushion of her bosom, the great emeralds in her ears, the diamonds that were sparkling coldly on her hands. She guessed his thoughts and the idea of selling these jewels gave her even greater apprehension than the terrors that the future involved.

"You do not know what all this represents to me," she added. "It is my uniform, my coat-of-arms, the safe-conduct that enables me to sustain myself in the world of my youth. The women who pass alone through this world need jewels in order to free their pathway of obstructions. The managers of a hotel become human and smile before their brilliancy. She who possesses them does not arouse suspicion however late she may be in paying the weekly account…. The employees at the frontier become exceedingly gallant: there is no passport more powerful. The haughty ladies become more cordial before their sparkle, at the tea hour in the halls where one knows nobody…. What I have suffered in order to acquire them!… I would be reduced to hunger before I would sell them. With them, I am somebody. A person may not have a coin in her pocket and yet, with these glittering vouchers, may enter where the richest assemble, living as one of them."

She would take no advice. She was like a hungry warrior in an enemy's country asked to surrender arms in exchange for gold. Once the necessity was satisfied, he would become a prisoner,—would be vilified and on a par with the miserable creatures who a few hours before were receiving his blows. She would meet courageously all dangers and sufferings rather than lay aside her helmet and shield, the symbols of her superior caste. The gown more than a year old, shabby, patched shoes, negligee with badly mended rents, did not distress her in the most trying moments. The important thing was to possess a stylish hat and to preserve a fur coat, a necklace of pearls, emeralds, diamonds,—all the honorable and glorious coat-of-mail in which she wished to die.

Her glance appeared to pity the ignorance of the sailor in venturing to propose such absurdities to her.

"It is impossible, Ulysses…. Take me with you! On the sea is where I shall be safest. I am not afraid of the submarines. People imagine them as numerous and close together as the flagstones of a pavement, but only one vessel in a thousand is the victim of their attacks…. Besides, with you I fear nothing; if it is our destiny to perish on the sea, we shall die together."

She became insinuating and enticing, passing her hands over his shoulders, pulling down his neck with a passion that was equal to an embrace. While speaking, her mouth came near to that of the sailor, the lips arched, beginning the rounding of a caressing kiss.

"Would you live so badly with Freya?… Do you no longer remember our past?… Am I now another being?"

Ulysses was remembering only too well that past, and began to recognize that this memory was becoming too vivid. She, who was following with astute eyes the seductive memories whirling through his brain, guessed what they were by the contraction of his face. And smiling triumphantly, she placed her mouth against his. She was sure of her power…. And she reproduced the kiss of the Aquarium, that kiss which had so thrilled the sailor, making his whole body tremble.

But when she gave herself up with more abandon to this dominating ascendancy, she felt herself repelled, shot back by a brutal hand-thrust similar to the blow that had hurled her upon the cushions at the beginning of the interview.

Some one had interposed between the two, in spite of their close embrace.

The captain, who was beginning to lose consciousness of his acts, like a castaway, descending and descending through the enchanting domains of limitless pleasure, suddenly beheld the face of the dead Esteban with his glassy eyes fixed upon him. Further on he saw another image, sad and shadowy,—Cinta, who was weeping as though her tears were the only ones that should fall upon the mutilated body of their son.

"Ah, no!… No!"

He himself was surprised at his voice. It was the roar of a wounded beast, the dry howling of a desperate creature, writhing in torment.

Freya, staggering under the rude push, again tried to draw near to him, enlacing him again in her arms, in order to repeat her imperious kiss.

"My love!… My love!…"

She could not go on. That tremendous hand again repelled her, but so violently that her head struck against the cushions of the divan.

The door trembled with a rude shove that made its two leaves open at the same time, dragging out the bolt of the lock.

The woman, tenacious in her desires, rose up quickly without noticing the pain of her fall. Nimbleness only could serve her now that Ferragut was escaping after mechanically picking up his hat.

"Ulysses!… Ulysses!…"

Ulysses was already in the street,—and in the little hallway various objects of bric-a-brac that had obtruded themselves and confused the fugitive in his blind flight were still trembling and then falling and breaking on the floor with a crash.

Feeling on his forehead the sensation of the free air, the dangers to which Freya had referred now surged up in his mind. He surveyed the street with a hostile glance…. Nobody! He longed to meet the enemy of whom that woman had been speaking, to find vent for that wrath which he was feeling even against himself. He was ashamed and furious at his passing weakness which had almost made him renew their former existence.

In the days following, he repeatedly recalled the band of refugees under the doctor's control. When meeting German-looking people on the street, he would glare at them menacingly. Was he perhaps one of those charged with killing him?… Then he would pass on, regretting his irritation, sure that they were tradesmen from South America, apothecaries or bank employees undecided whether to return to their home on the other side of the ocean, or to await in Barcelona the always-near triumph of their Emperor.

Finally the captain began to ridicule Freya's recommendations.

"Just her lies!… Inventions in order to engage my interest again and make me take her with me! Ah, the old fraud!"

One morning, as he was stepping out on the deck of his steamer, Toni approached him with a mysterious air, his face assuming an ashy pallor.

When they reached the saloon at the stern, the mate spoke in a low voice, looking around him.

The night before he had gone ashore in order to visit the theater. All of Toni's literary tastes and his emotions were concentrated in vaudeville. Men of talent had never invented anything better. From it he used to bring back the humming songs with which he beguiled his long watches on the bridge. Besides, it had a feminine chorus brilliantly clad and bare-legged, a prima donna rich in flesh and poor in clothes, a row of rosy and voluptuous ninepins that delighted the seamen's imagination without making him forget the obligations of fidelity.