painter,” said Tristana, barely able to breathe for sheer joy. “What you saw was his studio, silly. Oh, it must be really lovely!”
As well as furiously writing to each other every day, they met each afternoon. Tristana would leave the house with Saturna, and Horacio would be waiting for them just this side of Cuatro Caminos. Saturna would then let them go off on their own, hanging back discreetly so as to allow them all the time they needed to wander along the lush banks of the Oeste or Lozoya canals or the arid slopes of Amaniel. He wore a cloak and she a little veil and a short overcoat, and they would walk along arm in arm, oblivious to the world, its troubles and its vanities, living entirely for each other and for a dual “I,” as they strolled dreamily along or sat, enraptured, together. They spoke mainly about the present, but autobiography also somehow slipped into their sweet, confiding conversations, all love and idealism, all billing and cooing, with the occasional fond complaint or request made, mouth to mouth, by the insatiable egotism that demands a promise to love ever more and more, offering, in turn, an endless increase in love, regardless of the limits set by all things human.
As regards biographical details, Horacio was more forthcoming than Don Lope’s slave. She would like to have been equally open and sincere, but felt gagged by her fear of certain dark areas in her past. He, on the other hand, burned to tell her about his life, the unhappiest, saddest youth imaginable; now that he was happy, however, he enjoyed rummaging around in the sad depths of his martyrdom. When he lost both his parents, he was taken in by his paternal grandfather, beneath whose tyranny he suffered and groaned from adolescence through to manhood. Youth? He barely knew the meaning of the word. He was ignorant of the innocent pleasures, childish pranks, and frivolous restlessness with which a boy rehearses the actions of the man. There was no wild beast to compare with this grandfather, no prison more horrible than the dirty, stinking hardware store in which Horacio was kept shut up for some fifteen years, with his grandfather obdurately opposing his grandson’s innate love of painting and imposing on him instead the hateful shackles of calculus, and filling his mind up, like stoppers to keep his ideas in, with a thousand and one unpleasant chores involving accounts, invoices, and other such devilry; his grandfather had been the equal of the cruelest tyrants of antiquity or of the modern Turkish empire, and was the terror of the whole family. He sent his wife to an early grave and his male children hated him so much that they all emigrated. Two of his daughters allowed themselves to be carried off and the others made bad marriages in order to escape their father’s house.
This tiger took poor Horacio in at the age of thirteen and, as a preventative measure, tethered him by the ankles to the legs of the desk so that he wouldn’t be able to stray into the shop or abandon the tedious tasks he was obliged to perform. And if he was found idly drawing pictures with his pen, blows would rain down on him. The tiger wanted, at all costs, to instill in his grandson a love of commerce, because all that stuff and nonsense about art was, in his opinion, nothing but a very stupid way to die of hunger. Horacio’s companion in these travails and sufferings was his grandfather’s assistant, old and bald as a coot, thin and sallow-complexioned, who, in secret, for fear of riling his master—whom he served as faithfully as a dog—offered the lad his affectionate protection, covering up for any shortcomings and seeking pretexts to take him with him on errands, so that the boy could at least stretch his legs and enjoy a little diversion. The boy was docile and had few defenses against his grandfather’s despotism. He preferred to suffer rather than risk angering his tyrant, whose ire was aroused by the slightest thing. Horacio
As well as furiously writing to each other every day, they met each afternoon. Tristana would leave the house with Saturna, and Horacio would be waiting for them just this side of Cuatro Caminos. Saturna would then let them go off on their own, hanging back discreetly so as to allow them all the time they needed to wander along the lush banks of the Oeste or Lozoya canals or the arid slopes of Amaniel. He wore a cloak and she a little veil and a short overcoat, and they would walk along arm in arm, oblivious to the world, its troubles and its vanities, living entirely for each other and for a dual “I,” as they strolled dreamily along or sat, enraptured, together. They spoke mainly about the present, but autobiography also somehow slipped into their sweet, confiding conversations, all love and idealism, all billing and cooing, with the occasional fond complaint or request made, mouth to mouth, by the insatiable egotism that demands a promise to love ever more and more, offering, in turn, an endless increase in love, regardless of the limits set by all things human.
As regards biographical details, Horacio was more forthcoming than Don Lope’s slave. She would like to have been equally open and sincere, but felt gagged by her fear of certain dark areas in her past. He, on the other hand, burned to tell her about his life, the unhappiest, saddest youth imaginable; now that he was happy, however, he enjoyed rummaging around in the sad depths of his martyrdom. When he lost both his parents, he was taken in by his paternal grandfather, beneath whose tyranny he suffered and groaned from adolescence through to manhood. Youth? He barely knew the meaning of the word. He was ignorant of the innocent pleasures, childish pranks, and frivolous restlessness with which a boy rehearses the actions of the man. There was no wild beast to compare with this grandfather, no prison more horrible than the dirty, stinking hardware store in which Horacio was kept shut up for some fifteen years, with his grandfather obdurately opposing his grandson’s innate love of painting and imposing on him instead the hateful shackles of calculus, and filling his mind up, like stoppers to keep his ideas in, with a thousand and one unpleasant chores involving accounts, invoices, and other such devilry; his grandfather had been the equal of the cruelest tyrants of antiquity or of the modern Turkish empire, and was the terror of the whole family. He sent his wife to an early grave and his male children hated him so much that they all emigrated. Two of his daughters allowed themselves to be carried off and the others made bad marriages in order to escape their father’s house.
This tiger took poor Horacio in at the age of thirteen and, as a preventative measure, tethered him by the ankles to the legs of the desk so that he wouldn’t be able to stray into the shop or abandon the tedious tasks he was obliged to perform. And if he was found idly drawing pictures with his pen, blows would rain down on him. The tiger wanted, at all costs, to instill in his grandson a love of commerce, because all that stuff and nonsense about art was, in his opinion, nothing but a very stupid way to die of hunger. Horacio’s companion in these travails and sufferings was his grandfather’s assistant, old and bald as a coot, thin and sallow-complexioned, who, in secret, for fear of riling his master—whom he served as faithfully as a dog—offered the lad his affectionate protection, covering up for any shortcomings and seeking pretexts to take him with him on errands, so that the boy could at least stretch his legs and enjoy a little diversion. The boy was docile and had few defenses against his grandfather’s despotism. He preferred to suffer rather than risk angering his tyrant, whose ire was aroused by the slightest thing. Horacio
Similar Books
