It was a night in August; Manuel, Vidal, La Flora1 and La Justa had just left El Dorado theatre, when Vidal suggested:
“They’re executing a soldier at daybreak. Shall we take it in?”
“Sure. Let’s go,” answered La Flora and La Justa.
It was a balmy, beautiful night.
They went up the Calle Alcalá and entered the Fornos. At about three they left the Café and took an open hack2 for the place of the execution.
They left the carriage opposite the Model Prison.
It was too early. It had not yet dawned.
They circled around the prison by a side-street that was no more than a ditch running through the sand and finally reached the clearings near the Calle de Rosales. The structure of the Model Prison, viewed from these desolate3 fields, assumed an imposing4 appearance; it looked like a fort bathing there in the blue, spectral5 illumination of the arc lights. From time to time the sentinels sang out a prolonged watchword that produced a terrible impression of anguish6.
[286]
“What a sad house!” murmured Vidal. “And to think of all the people shut up in it!”
“Pse.... Let them all be shot,” replied La Justa, indifferently.
“Then what do they rob for?” she countered.
“And you, why do you ...?”
“Because I need to eat.”
“Well, they need to eat, too.”
La Flora now recalled that as a little girl she had witnessed the execution of La Higinia. She had gone with the janitress’s daughter.
“There’s where the scaffold was,” and she pointed8 to the middle of a wall opposite the death-house. “The clearings were jammed with people. La Higinia came along dressed all in black, leaning against the Brethren of Peace and Charity. She must have been dead from fright already. They sat her down on the stool and a priest with a raised cross in his hand stood before her; the executioner tied her feet with rope, catching9 her skirts in the knot; then he blindfolded10 her with a black handkerchief and getting behind her gave two turns to the wheel. Right away he removed the handkerchief from her face and the woman fell stiff upon the boards.
“Then,” concluded La Flora, “the other girl and myself had to run off, for the guards charged the crowd.”
[287]
“These things take the life out of me,” he said, placing one hand over his heart.
“Then why did you want to come here?” asked Manuel. “Do you want to turn back?”
“No. No.”
They proceeded to the Plaza13 de Moncloa. At one of the corners of the prison was a seething14 throng15. Day was breaking. A border of gold was beginning to glow on the horizon. Through the Calle de la Princesa came trooping a company of artillery16; it looked phantasmal in the hazy17 light of dawn. The company came to a halt before the prison.
“Now let’s see whether they’ll give us the slip and shoot him somewhere else,” muttered a little old fellow, to whom the idea of getting up so early in the morning and then being cheated out of an execution must have appeared as the height of the disagreeable.
“They’re executing him over toward San Bernardino,” announced a ragamuffin.
There was a general stampede for the scene of the execution. And indeed, just below some clearings near the Paseo de Areneros the soldiers had formed into a square. There was an audience of actors, night-owls, chorus-girls and prostitutes seated around in hacks19, and a throng of loafers and beggars. The barren area was fairly vast. A grey wagon20 came rumbling21 along at top speed directly into the centre of the square; three figures stepped down, looking from the distance like dolls; the men beside the criminal removed their high hats. The[288] soldier who was to be executed could not be seen very well.
“Down with your heads!” cried the crowd at the rear. “Let everybody have a chance to see!” Eight cavalrymen stepped forward with short rifles in their hands and took up a position in front of the condemned22 man. Not exactly opposite him, naturally, for, moving along sideways like an animal with many feet, they proceeded several metres. The sun shot brilliant reflections from the yellow sand of the clearing, from the helmets and the belts of the soldiers. No voice of command was heard; the rifles took aim.
“Put down your heads!” came again in angry accents from those who were in the third and fourth row of the spectators.
A detonation23, not very loud, rang out. Shortly afterwards came another.
“That’s the finishing touch,” muttered Vidal.
The audience broke up and made off toward Madrid. There was the roll of drums and the blare of bugles25. The sun glowed in the window panes26 of the houses nearby. Manuel, Vidal and the two women were walking through the Paseo de Areneros when they heard the crack of another discharge.
“He wasn’t dead yet,” added Vidal, paler than ever.
“I tell you what,” spoke28 up Vidal. “I have an idea for wiping away the unpleasant impression this has made upon us. Let’s go for a little excursion and lunch this afternoon.”
[289]
“Where?” asked Manuel.
“Over by the river. It’ll remind us of the good old days. Eh. What do you say?”
“Right-o.”
“La Justa won’t be busy?”
“No.”
“Settled, then. At noon we’ll all meet at Se?ora Benita’s restaurant, near the Pier29 and Sotillo Bridge.”
“Agreed.”
“And now let’s be off to catch a snooze.”
Which they did. At twelve Manuel and La Justa left the house and made their way to the restaurant. The others had not yet arrived.
They sat down upon a bench; La Justa was in bad humour. She bought ten céntimos’ worth of peanuts and began to nibble30 at them.
“Want any?” she asked Manuel.
“No. They get into my teeth.”
“Then I don’t want any, either,” and she threw them to the ground.
“Because I feel like it.”
“Suits me. Do as you please.”
For an appreciable31 period they sat there waiting, neither breaking the silence. La Justa, at last beyond her patience, got up.
“I’m going home,” she said.
“I’ll wait,” replied Manuel.
“Go ahead, then, and may they darn you with black thread, you thief.”
[290]
“And give you blood pudding.”
“Thanks.”
La Justa, who was on the point of leaving, caught sight just then of Calatrava and La Aragonesa, and Vidal in company of La Flora. She paused. Calatrava had a guitar with him.
An organ-grinder happened to be passing the restaurant. The Cripple stopped him and they danced to his tunes34, Vidal with La Flora, La Justa with Manuel.
Now new couples appeared, among them a fat, flat-nosed virago35 dressed in ridiculous fashion and accompanied by a fellow with mutton-chop whiskers and the general appearance of a gipsy. La Justa, who was in an insolent36, provocative37 mood, began to laugh at the fat woman. The aggrieved38 party replied in a depreciative, sarcastic39 voice, scoring each word:
“These cheap fly-by-nights....”
“The dirty whore!” muttered La Justa, and began to sing this tango in a lowered voice, turning toward the fat woman as she did so:
Eres más fea que un perro de presa,
y á presumida no hay quién te gane.
You’re uglier far than a bull-dog
The man with the gipsy appearance went over to Manuel and informed him that that lady (La Justa)[291] was insulting his own, and this was something he could not permit. Manuel was well aware that the man was in the right; yet, despite this, he made an insolent reply. Vidal intervened, and after many an explanation on both sides, it was decided42 that nobody had been insulted and the matter was composed. But La Justa was bent43 upon trouble and got into a scrape with one of the organ grinders, who was an impudent44 rascal45 by very virtue46 of his calling.
“Shut up, damn it all!” shouted Calatrava at La Justa. “And you, too, close your trap,” he cried to the organ grinder. “For if you don’t, you’re going to feel this stick.”
“Let’s better go inside,” suggested Vidal.
The three couples proceeded to a veranda47 furnished with tables and rustic48 chairs; a wooden balustrade ran along the side that overlooked the Manzanares river.
In the middle of the stream were two islets mantled49 with shining verdure, between which a number of planks51 served as a bridge from one bank to the other.
Lunch was brought, but La Justa had no appetite, nor would she deign52 a reply to any questions. Shortly afterward, for no reason whatsoever53, she burst into bitter tears, amidst the cruel bantering54 of La Flora and La Aragonesa. Then she grew calm and was soon as happy and jovial55 as could be.
They ate a sumptuous56 meal and left for a moment to dance on the road to the tunes of the barrel organ.[292] Several times, it seemed to Manuel, he caught sight of El Bizco in front of the restaurant.
“Can it be Bizco? What can he be looking for around here?” he asked himself.
Toward nightfall the three couples went in, turned on the light in their room and sent for whisky and coffee. For a long time they chatted. Calatrava related with evident delight a number of horrors out of the war with Cuba. In that conflict he had satisfied his natural instincts of cruelty, slicing negroes, razing57 mills, spreading fire and destruction in his path.
The three women, especially La Aragonesa, were filled with enthusiasm by his tales. All at once Calatrava lapsed58 into silence, as if some sad memory had stemmed his garrulousness59.
Vidal took up the guitar and sang the Espartero tango with deep feeling. Then he hummed the tune33 of La Tempranica very charmingly, enunciating the phrases sharply so as to give them fuller savour, and placing his hand over the orifice at times so as to mute the sound. La Flora struck a number of merry poses while Vidal, affecting a gipsy style, sang on:
Ze coman los mengues,
mardita la ara?a,
que tié en la barriga
pintá una guitarra!
Bailando ze cura
tan jondo doló....
Ay! Malhaya la ara?a
que a mí me picó.
[293]
Then Marcos Calatrava seized the instrument. He was no player like Vidal; he could simply strum a few chords gently, monotonously61. Marcos sang a Cuban song,—sad, languid, filled with a communicative longing62 for some tropical land. It was a lengthy63 narrative64 that evoked65 the negro danzón, the glorious nights of the tropics, the fatherland, the blood of slain66 soldiers, the flag, which brings tears to one’s eyes, the memory of the rout67 ... an exotic, yet intimate piece, exceedingly sorrowful,—and something beautifully plebeian68 and sad.
At the sound of these songs Manuel was inspired with the great, proud, gory69 idea of the fatherland. He pictured it as a proud woman, with glittering eyes and terrible gesture, standing70 beside a lion....
Then Calatrava sang, to the monotonous60 accompaniment of his strumming, a very languorous71, doleful song of the insurgents72. One of the stanzas73, which Calatrava sang in the Cuban dialect, ran as follows:
Pinté a Matansa confusa,
la playa de Viyamá,
y no he podido pintá
el nido de la lechusa;
yo pinté po donde crusa
un beyo ferrocarrí,
un machete y un fusí
y una lancha ca?onera,
y no pinté la bandera,
por la que voy a morí.
For some reason which Manuel could not fathom,[294] the incongruous mixture that appeared in the song filled him with a vast sadness....
It was darkling outside. Afar, the saffron-hued soil was gleaming with the dying quivers of the sun, which was hidden by clouds that looked like fiery75 dragons; a tower here, a tree there, yonder a ramshackle shanty76, broke the straight, monotonous line of the horizon. The western sky was a caldron of flames.
Then came darkness; the fields sank into gloom and the sun disappeared.
Over the tiny plank50 bridge that reached from one bank to the other passed a procession of dark women with bundles of clothes under their arms.
Manuel was overwhelmed by an all-engulfing anguish. From the distance, out of some restaurant, came the far-off droning of a guitar.
Vidal ran out of the veranda.
“I’m coming!” he cried.
“Was that Vidal?” asked La Flora.
“I don’t know,” answered Calatrava, laying the guitar upon the table.
There was a din18 of voices in the direction of the river. All the patrons of the place dashed over to the balcony that looked out upon the Manzanares. Upon one of the green islets two men were engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle. One of them was Vidal; he could be recognized by his white Cordovan hat. La Flora, making sure it was he, uttered a shriek78 of[295] terror. In an instant the two men had separated and Vidal fell headlong to the ground, without a sound. The other man placed his knee upon the fallen man’s back and must have plunged79 his dirk into him some ten or a dozen times. Then he ran into the river, reached the other side and disappeared.
Calatrava and Manuel let themselves down over the veranda balustrade and ran across the plank bridge to the little island.
Vidal was stretched face downward in a pool of blood. The dirk was thrust into his neck, near the nape. Calatrava pulled at the handle, but the weapon must have penetrated80 into the vertebrae. Then Marcos turned the body half way around and placed his hand over the man’s heart.
“He’s dead,” he pronounced, calmly.
Manuel eyed the corpse81 with horror. The dying light of evening was reflected in its widely opened eyes. Calatrava replaced the body in the position in which they had found it. They returned to the restaurant.
“Let’s be off at once,” said Marcos.
“And Vidal?” asked La Flora.
“He’s given up the ghost.”
La Flora broke into a wail, but Calatrava seized her violently by the arm and enforced silence.
“Come on ... clear out,” he ordered. With the utmost self-composure he paid the bill, took his guitar and they all left the restaurant.
It was now night; in the distance, Madrid, a pale coppery hue74, rose against the soft, melancholy82, azure[296] sky which was streaked83 in the west by long purplish and greenish bands. The stars began to shine and twinkle languidly; the river shot back silvery reflections.
Silently they crossed the Toledo Bridge, each one given up to his own meditations84 and fears. At the end of the Paseo de los Ocho Hilos they found two carriages; Calatrava, La Aragonesa and La Flora stepped into one, and La Justa and Manuel got into the other.
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收听单词发音
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1
flora
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| n.(某一地区的)植物群 | |
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hack
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| n.劈，砍，出租马车；v.劈，砍，干咳 | |
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desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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imposing
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| adj.使人难忘的，壮丽的，堂皇的，雄伟的 | |
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spectral
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| adj.幽灵的，鬼魂的 | |
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anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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8
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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9
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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10
blindfolded
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| v.（尤指用布）挡住（某人）的视线( blindfold的过去式 )；蒙住（某人）的眼睛；使不理解；蒙骗 | |
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detailed
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| adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的 | |
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12
recital
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| n.朗诵，独奏会，独唱会 | |
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13
plaza
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| n.广场，市场 | |
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seething
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| 沸腾的，火热的 | |
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15
throng
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| n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集 | |
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16
artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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17
hazy
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| adj.有薄雾的，朦胧的；不肯定的，模糊的 | |
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18
din
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| n.喧闹声，嘈杂声 | |
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19
hacks
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| 黑客 | |
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wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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21
rumbling
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| n. 隆隆声, 辘辘声 adj. 隆隆响的 动词rumble的现在分词 | |
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condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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23
detonation
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| n.爆炸；巨响 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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bugles
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| 妙脆角，一种类似薯片但做成尖角或喇叭状的零食； 号角( bugle的名词复数 )； 喇叭； 匍匐筋骨草； （装饰女服用的）柱状玻璃（或塑料）小珠 | |
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26
panes
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| 窗玻璃( pane的名词复数 ) | |
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27
moody
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| adj.心情不稳的，易怒的，喜怒无常的 | |
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28
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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29
pier
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| n.码头；桥墩，桥柱；[建]窗间壁，支柱 | |
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nibble
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| n.轻咬，啃；v.一点点地咬，慢慢啃，吹毛求疵 | |
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appreciable
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| adj.明显的，可见的，可估量的，可觉察的 | |
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32
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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33
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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tunes
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| n.曲调，曲子( tune的名词复数 )v.调音( tune的第三人称单数 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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virago
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| n.悍妇 | |
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insolent
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| adj.傲慢的，无理的 | |
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provocative
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| adj.挑衅的，煽动的，刺激的，挑逗的 | |
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38
aggrieved
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| adj.愤愤不平的，受委屈的；悲痛的；（在合法权利方面）受侵害的v.令委屈，令苦恼，侵害( aggrieve的过去式)；令委屈，令苦恼，侵害( aggrieve的过去式和过去分词) | |
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sarcastic
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| adj.讥讽的，讽刺的，嘲弄的 | |
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impudence
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| n.厚颜无耻；冒失；无礼 | |
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41
grunted
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说 | |
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42
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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43
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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44
impudent
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| adj.鲁莽的，卑鄙的，厚颜无耻的 | |
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rascal
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| n.流氓；不诚实的人 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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veranda
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| n.走廊；阳台 | |
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48
rustic
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| adj.乡村的，有乡村特色的；n.乡下人，乡巴佬 | |
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49
mantled
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| 披着斗篷的，覆盖着的 | |
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plank
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| n.板条，木板，政策要点，政纲条目 | |
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51
planks
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| （厚）木板( plank的名词复数 )； 政纲条目，政策要点 | |
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52
deign
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| v. 屈尊, 惠允 ( 做某事) | |
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53
whatsoever
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| adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么 | |
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54
bantering
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| adj.嘲弄的v.开玩笑，说笑，逗乐( banter的现在分词 )；（善意地）取笑，逗弄 | |
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55
jovial
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| adj.快乐的，好交际的 | |
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56
sumptuous
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| adj.豪华的，奢侈的，华丽的 | |
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razing
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| v.彻底摧毁，将…夷为平地( raze的现在分词 ) | |
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58
lapsed
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| adj.流失的，堕落的v.退步( lapse的过去式和过去分词 )；陷入；倒退；丧失 | |
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59
garrulousness
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60
monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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61
monotonously
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| adv.单调地，无变化地 | |
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62
longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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63
lengthy
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| adj.漫长的，冗长的 | |
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64
narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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65
evoked
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| [医]诱发的 | |
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66
slain
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| 杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词) | |
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rout
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| n.溃退，溃败；v.击溃，打垮 | |
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plebeian
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| adj.粗俗的；平民的；n.平民；庶民 | |
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gory
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| adj.流血的；残酷的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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71
languorous
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| adj.怠惰的，没精打采的 | |
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72
insurgents
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| n.起义，暴动，造反( insurgent的名词复数 ) | |
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73
stanzas
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| 节，段( stanza的名词复数 ) | |
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hue
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| n.色度；色调；样子 | |
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fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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shanty
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| n.小屋，棚屋；船工号子 | |
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77
wail
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| vt./vi.大声哀号，恸哭；呼啸，尖啸 | |
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shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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82
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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streaked
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| adj.有条斑纹的，不安的v.快速移动( streak的过去式和过去分词 )；使布满条纹 | |
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meditations
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| 默想( meditation的名词复数 )； 默念； 沉思； 冥想 | |
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