Selected Writings (Dario, Ruben) (28 page)

“I knew where my grotto was. I rapped on the ground, the black earth opened, and I dropped into my domain. You poor young gnomes have much to learn!

“Under the tender shoots of new green ferns I scuttled, across rocks washed by the burbling, bubbling spray, carrying the woman, the lovely creature, under this once-muscular arm, about the waist. She screamed, I rapped the ground, and we descended. Amazement, astonishment, remained above; down below, the proud, victorious gnome.

“One day I was hammering an immense hunk of diamond. It shone like a star and shattered into pieces under my mallet.

The floor of my workshop looked like the shards of a shattered sun. My beloved woman was resting nearby, a rose of flesh among the flower-beds of sapphires, empress of gold upon a rock-crystal bed, all naked and splendid as a goddess.

But in the depths of my domain, my queen, my beloved, my beautiful one, was unfaithful to me. When humans truly love, their passion penetrates all things, and is capable of piercing all the earth.

My human woman loved a human man, and from her prison she was sending him her sighs. The sighs passed through the pores of the earth’s skin and found him, and he, still loving her, would kiss the roses in a certain garden, and she, his beloved, would have sudden convulsions—I noticed them, of course—in which she would pucker her pink, cool lips like the petals of a damask rose. How did these two sense one another’s love? Being the creature that I am, I do not know.

 

I had finished my work. A large pile of diamonds finished in one day. The earth opened its granite fissures like thirsty lips, awaiting the brilliant shattering of the rich crystal. At the end of the day’s work, tired, I gave one last hammer-blow, which split a rock, and I fell asleep.

I awoke some time later when I heard a sound like a moan.

From her bed, from her mansion more rich and luminous than all the queens’ of the Orient, my beloved, the stolen woman, desperate for a human’s love, had fled. Oh! And trying to escape—beautiful, and naked—through the crack opened by my granite mallet, she had torn her body—so white, so soft, so like orange blossom and marble and rose—on the sharp edges of the broken diamonds. Blood flowed from the wounds along her sides and flanks; her moaning moved me to tears. Oh, what pain!

I awoke, took her in my arms, gave her my most burning kisses, but her blood flooded the cave, and the mass of diamonds was stained as though by cochineal crimson.

I thought, when I gave her a kiss, that I caught the smell of a sweet perfume, exhaled by that fiery mouth. Indeed, it was her soul. Her body lay lifeless.

When our great patriarch, the demigod centaur of the bowels of the earth, came by, he found that mass of blood-red diamonds. . . .

 

Pause.

“Have you understood my story?”

The gnomes, very grave, stood.

They examined the false stone, the product of the Parisian sage, more closely.

“Look, it has no facets!”

“What a pale gleam it throws!”

“Imposture!”

“As round as a beetle’s shell.”

And then—one here, another there—they went to the walls and tore from them the pieces of the arabesques: rubies as big as oranges, as red and blazing as diamonds turned to blood. And they said:

“These are ours, oh Mother Earth!”

It was an orgy of light and color.

And they tossed the gigantic, luminous stones into the air, and laughed.

Suddenly, with all the dignity of a gnome:

“And now, the contempt!”

They understood. They took the false ruby, shattered it into pieces, and threw the fragments—with terrible disdain—into a hole that dropped into an ancient jungle, now turned to coal.

Then, upon their rubies, upon their opals, in the cavern of gleaming, shining walls, they joined hands and danced a wild, echoing farandole.

And they howled with laughter to see themselves made gigantic in the shadows on the walls.

 

Now Puck was outside, in the bee-buzzing gold of the newborn morning, flying toward a flowery meadow. And he whispered to himself, smiling cheerily:

“Earth . . . Mother . . .”

Because you, oh Mother Earth, are grand and fecund, and your breast is inextinguishable, and from your brown womb issue forth the sap of the robust trees, and gold, and the diamantine water, and the chaste fleur-de-lis. All that is pure, and strong, and unfalsifiable! And you, Woman, are spirit and flesh, and wholly love.

THE BIRTH OF CABBAGE

In the earthly paradise, on that glowing day when the flowers were created, and before Eve was tempted by the serpent, the Evil One approached the most beautiful new rose just at the moment when, at the caress of the celestial sun, she spread the red virginity of her lips.

“You are beautiful.”

“I am,” said the rose.

“Beautiful and happy,” the devil went on. “You have color, grace, and fragrance. But . . .”

“But?”

“You are not useful. Do you not see those tall trees covered with acorns? Those, besides being leafy and giving shade, give food to multitudes of animate creatures that pause beneath their branches. Oh Rose, being beautiful is so little . . .”

The rose then—tempted as, later, Woman would be—wished for usefulness, and she wished so desperately that a paleness crept over her crimson.

And God passed by the next morning, just after dawn.

“Father,” said that princess of the flowers, trembling in all her perfumed beauty, “would you make me useful.”

“So be it, my child,” replied the Lord, smiling.

And it was then that the world saw its first cabbage.

QUEEN MAB’S VEIL

Queen Mab, riding on a ray of sunlight in her coach made of a single pearl and drawn by four beetles with golden carapaces and wings of pavéed gemstones, flitted in through the window of a garret in which there were four thin, bearded, impertinent men, complaining like wretches.

It was back in those years when the fairies had shared out their gifts to mortals. To some they had given the mysterious little wands that fill the heavy casks of trade with gold; to others, wondrous stalks of wheat which, when the tiny seeds were stripped from their tips, piled the granaries full of riches; to yet others, crystals that allowed the possessor to discover gold and precious gems within the bowels of mother earth; to some, full heads of hair and muscles like Goliath’s, and enormous sledgehammers with which they struck the red-hot iron; to others, strong feet and agile legs with which to ride on swift steeds that drink the wind, their manes streaming out behind them.

The four men were complaining. One had been given a quarry, another the rainbow, another rhythm, and the fourth the azure sky.

 

Queen Mab overheard their complaints. The first one was saying: “Ay! Here I am, struggling with my dreams of marble! I have wrestled forth the block and I have the chisel. You others have gold, or harmony, or light, while I dream of divine white Venus, displaying her nakedness under a roof the color of the sky. I want to give the mass line and plastic loveliness, and I want a colorless blood, like that of the gods, to flow through the statue’s veins. I have the spirit of Greece in my brain, and I love nudes in which the nymph flees and the faun stretches out his arms. Oh, Phidias! You are for me as peerless, as august as a god in the realm of eternal beauty, a king who stands before an army of beauties that throw off their magnificent chitons to display to your eyes the splendor of their bodies of rose and snow.

“You strike, wound, and tame the marble, and the harmonic blows of your chisel resound like a poem, and you are adored by the cicada, lover of the sun, who hides among the tendrils of the virgin grapevine. For you, the blond, glowing Apollos, the severe and sovereign Minervas. You, like a wizard, transform rock into likeness, elephant’s tusk into celebratory goblet. And when I look upon your grandeur I feel the martyrdom of my own insignificance. Because the age of glories is past. Because I tremble before the eyes of today. Because I contemplate the immense ideal, and the forces spent. Because, as I chisel away at the block, I am gnawed by disheartenment.”

 

And the next man said: “Today, I shall break my brushes. Why should I want the rainbow and this great palette of flowering fields, if when I am done, my painting will not be admitted into the Salon? What shall I paint? I have passed through all the schools, all possible artistic inspirations. I have painted the visage of Diana and the visage of the Madonna. I have borrowed the countryside’s colors, and its hues; I have worshipped the light like a lover, and have embraced it like a mistress. I have been an adorer of the nude, with its magnificences, its flesh tones, and its fleeting half-tints. On my canvases I have drawn the saints’ nimbuses and the cherubs’ wings. Oh, but always the terrible disappointment! The future! Selling a Cleopatra for two pesetas in order to eat!

“If only I could, in the shudder of my inspiration, paint the great painting that I have down here inside me! . . .”

 

And the next man said: “In my great hope for my symphonies my soul is lost, and I fear all disappointments. I listen to all harmonies, from Terpander’s lyre to Wagner’s orchestral fantasies. My ideals shine forth in the midst of my inspired audacities. I have the perception of that philosopher who heard the music of the spheres. All sounds can be caught and imprisoned, all echoes are capable of being combined. Everything fits within the line of my chromatic scales.

“The shimmering light is an anthem, and the melody of the forest finds echo in my heart. From the deafening noise of the storm to the song of the bird, everything mixes and joins and intertwines in infinite cadence. And meanwhile, I see nothing but the multitude that snorts and bellows, and the prison cell of matrimony.”

 

And the last man: “We all drink the water of the Ionian spring. But the ideal floats in the azure, and in order for spirits to take delight in its light supreme, they must ascend. I possess the verse that is of honey and of gold, and the verse that is of red-glowing iron. I am the amphora of celestial perfume; I possess love. Dove, star, nest, lily—you all know where I dwell. For my incommensurable flights I possess the wings of the eagle, which with magical strokes can part the hurricane. And to find consonants, I search in two mouths whose lips come together—the kiss explodes, and I write the line of poetry, and then, if you see my soul, you will meet my muse. I love epics, for from epics springs the heroic breath that sets banners rippling above the lances and crested helmets; lyric songs, because they sing of goddesses and love; and eclogues, because they are fragrant of verbena and of thyme, and of the holy breath of the ox crowned with roses. I would write something immortal, but I am crushed by a future of poverty and hunger.”

 

And then Queen Mab, from the back of her coach made of a single pearl, took out an azure veil, as impalpable as though it were made of sighs, or the glances of pensive blond angels. And that veil was the veil of dreams, the sweet dreams that make one see life all rose-colored. And she cast it over the four lean, bearded, impertinent men. And they immediately ceased being sad, because hope penetrated their breast, and the happy sun penetrated their head, with the imp of vanity, which consoles poor artists in their profound disappointments.

And since then, in the garret rooms of brilliant wretches, where the azure dream floats on dust motes in the sun, men think of the future as they think of the coming dawn, and laugh a laughter that banishes sadness, and dance strange capers around a white Apollo, a pretty landscape, an old violin, a yellowing manuscript.

Fables

THE PALACE OF THE SUN

To you mothers of anemic daughters goes this tale, the story of Berta, the girl with the olive-colored eyes, as fresh as a branch of peach-blossoms, as glowing as the dawn, as gentle as the princess of a fairy tale.

You will see, wise and respectable ladies, that there is something better than arsenic and iron for rekindling the crimson of lovely virginal cheeks, and that the doors of your enchanting little birds’ cages must be opened, especially when the springtime comes and there is ardor in the veins and sap, and a thousand atoms of sunlight are buzzing in the garden like a swarm of gold among the half-open roses.

 

When she turned fifteen, Berta began to grow sad, and her blazing eyes were ringed with a dark and melancholy cast.

“Berta, I’ve bought you two dolls . . .”

“I don’t want them, mamá . . .”

“I’ve sent for the
Nocturnes
. . .”

“My fingers ache, mamá . . .”

“Well, then . . .”

“I’m sad, mamá . . .”

“Then we’ll send for the doctor.”

And in came the tortoise-shell spectacles, the black gloves, the illustrious bald spot, and the double-breasted frock coat.

Let’s have a look, then. . . . No, everything quite normal. The girl’s age, you know; the pangs of adolescence. . . . Clear symptoms: a lack of appetite, a sort of oppression in the chest, sadness, an occasional throbbing in the temples, palpitations. . . . Perfectly normal. Give her a few drops of arsenious acid, then showers. That’s the treatment.

And so when spring began, the cure began to be administered for her melancholy: drops of arsenious acid and showers—Berta, the girl with the olive-colored eyes, as fresh as a branch of peach-blossoms, as glowing as the dawn, as gentle as the princess of a fairy tale.

 

But despite everything, the dark circles around her eyes persisted, her sadness did not abate, and Berta, pale as a precious piece of ivory, came one day to the doors of death. Everyone in the palace wept for her, and the wise and sentimental mamá had to think about the white palms of a maiden’s coffin. Until one morning the languid anemic went down to the garden, all alone and still with that air of vague melancholy lethargy, just as the dawn was laughing. Sighing, she wandered aimlessly here and there, and seeing her, the flowers were sad. She leaned on the pedestal of a magnificent, noble faun whose marble locks were wet with dew and whose splendid nude torso was bathed in golden light. She spied a lily raising its white chalice to the azure sky, and she stretched out her hand to pick it. Hardly had she . . .—yes, this is a fairy tale, my dear ladies, but soon you shall see its applications to sweet reality—hardly had she touched the flower’s cup, when a fairy sprang from it, in a tiny golden coach, and the fairy was dressed in dazzling impalpable threads, with a sprinkling of dew, a diadem of pearls, and a little silver wand.