Maria (GB English). Jorge Isaacs

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      –It's much better than the one you use," I observed, examining it.

      –But the one I use is very accurate, and yours is very small: you must give it to one of the girls and take this one for yourself.

      Without leaving me time to thank him, he added:

      –Are you going to Emigdio's house? Tell his father that I can prepare the guinea-pasture for us to fatten together; but that his cattle must be ready on the fifteenth of the next.

      I immediately returned to my room to take my pistols. Mary, from the garden, at the foot of my window, was handing Emma a bunch of montenegros, marjoram, and carnations; but the most beautiful of these, for their size and luxuriance, was on her lips.

      –Good morning, Maria," I said, hurrying to receive the flowers.

      She, paling instantly, returned the greeting curtly, and the carnation fell from her mouth. She handed me the flowers, dropping some at my feet, which she picked up and placed within my reach when her cheeks were again flushed.

      –Do you want to exchange all these for the carnation you had on your lips," I said as I received the last ones?

      –I stepped on it," he replied, lowering his head to look for it.

      –Thus trodden, I will give you all these for him.

      He remained in the same attitude without answering me.

      –Do you allow me to pick it up?

      He then bent down to take it and handed it to me without looking at me.

      Meanwhile Emma pretended to be completely distracted by the new flowers.

      I shook Mary's hand with which I was handing over the desired carnation, saying to her:

      –Thank you, thank you! See you this afternoon.

      She raised her eyes to look at me with the most rapturous expression that tenderness and modesty, reproach and tears, can produce in a woman's eyes.

      Chapter XIX

      I had walked a little more than a league, and was already struggling to open the door that gave access to the mangones of Emigdio's father's hacienda. Having overcome the resistance of the mouldy hinges and shaft, and the even more tenacious resistance of the pylon, made of a large stone, which, suspended from the roof with a bolt, gave torment to passers-by by keeping that singular device closed, I considered myself fortunate not to have got stuck in the stony mire, the respectable age of which was known by the colour of the stagnant water.

      I crossed a short plain where the fox-tail, the scrub-plate and the bramble dominated over the marshy grasses; there some shaven-tailed milling-horse browsed, colts scampered and old donkeys meditated, so lacerated and mutilated by the carrying of firewood and the cruelty of their muleteers, that Buffon would have been perplexed to have to classify them.

      The large, old house, surrounded by coconut and mango trees, had an ashen, sagging roof overlooking the tall, dense cocoa grove.

      I had not exhausted the obstacles to get there, for I stumbled into the corrals surrounded by tetillal; and there I had to roll the sturdy guaduas over the rickety steps. Two blacks came to my aid, a man and a woman: he was dressed in nothing but breeches, showing his athletic back shining with the peculiar sweat of his race; she was wearing a blue fula and for a shirt a handkerchief knotted at the nape of her neck and tied with the waistband, which covered her chest. They both wore reed hats, the kind that soon turn straw-coloured with little use.

      The laughing, smoking pair were going to do no less than have it out with another pair of colts whose turn had already come in the flail; and I knew why, for I was struck by the sight not only of the black, but also of his companion, armed with lassoed paddles. They were shouting and running when I alighted under the wing of the house, disregarding the threats of two inhospitable dogs that were lying under the seats of the corridor.

      A few frayed reed harnesses and saddles mounted on the railings were enough to convince me that all the plans made in Bogotá by Emigdio, impressed by my criticisms, had been dashed against what he called his father's shanties. On the other hand, the breeding of small livestock had improved considerably, as was shown by the goats of various colours that stank up the courtyard; and I saw the same improvement in the poultry, for many peacocks greeted my arrival with alarming cries, and among the Creole or marsh ducks, which swam in the neighbouring ditch, some of the so-called Chileans were distinguished by their circumspect demeanour.

      Emigdio was an excellent boy. A year before my return to Cauca, his father sent him to Bogota in order to set him, as the good gentleman said, on his way to become a merchant and a good trader. Carlos, who lived with me at the time and was always in the know even about what he wasn't supposed to know, came across Emigdio, I don't know where, and planted him in front of me one Sunday morning, preceding him as he entered our room to say: "Man, I'm going to kill you with pleasure: I've brought you the most beautiful thing.

      I ran to embrace Emigdio, who, standing at the door, had the strangest figure imaginable. It is foolish to pretend to describe him.

      My countryman had come laden with the hat with the coffee-with-milk-coloured hair that his father, Don Ignacio, had worn in the holy weeks of his youth. Whether it was too tight, or whether he thought it was good to wear it like that, the thing formed a ninety-degree angle with the back of our friend's long, rangy neck. That skinny frame; those thinning, lank sideburns, matching the most disconsolate hair in its neglect ever seen; that yellowish complexion peeling the sunny roadside; the collar of the shirt tucked hopelessly under the lapels of a white waistcoat whose tips hated each other; the arms imprisoned in the collars of the shirt; the arms pinned in the collars of the shirt; the arms pinned in the collars of the shirt; the arms pinned in the collars of the shirt; the arms pinned in the collars of the shirt; the arms caught in the sleeves of a blue coat; the chambray breeches with wide cordovan loops, and the boots of polished deer-hide, were more than enough to excite Charles's enthusiasm.

      Emigdio was carrying a pair of big-eared spurs in one hand and a bulky parcel for me in the other. I hastened to unburden him of everything, taking an instant to look sternly at Carlos, who, lying on one of the beds in our bedchamber, was biting a pillow, crying his eyes out, which almost caused me the most unwelcome embarrassment.

      I offered Emigdio a seat in the little sitting-room; and as he chose a spring sofa, the poor fellow, feeling that he was sinking, tried his best to find something to hold on to in the air; but, having lost all hope, he pulled himself together as best he could, and when he was on his feet, he said:

      –What the hell! This Carlos can't even come to his senses, and now! No wonder he was laughing in the street about the sticking he was going to do to me. And you too? Well, if these people here are the same devils. What do you think of the one they did to me today?

      Carlos came out of the room, taking advantage of this happy occasion, and we were both able to laugh at our ease.

      –What Emigdio! -said he to our visitor, "sit down in this chair, which has no trap. It is necessary that you should keep a leash.

      –Yes," replied Emigdio, sitting down suspiciously, as if he feared another failure.

      –What have they done to you? -he laughed more than Carlos asked.

      –Have you seen? I was about not to tell them.

      –But why? -insisted the implacable Carlos, throwing an arm round his СКАЧАТЬ