Caesar or Nothing Part 72

Caesar had reached such a degree of exaltation that he thought of nothing any more, except his sweetheart. At night, before going to sleep, he thought of her deliriously. He often dreamed that Amparito had changed into the red-flowered oleander of the wild palace garden, and in every flower of the oleander he used to see Amparito's red lips and white teeth.

XIV. INTRANSIGENCE LOST

DISQUIET DISAPPEARS

The wedding took place and Caesar had to compromise about a lot of things. It didn't trouble him to confess and receive communion; he considered those mere customs, and went to the church of the Plain to conform to these practices with the old priest who was a friend of Amparito's.

On the other hand, it did bother Caesar to have to suffer Father Martin in his house, who allowed himself to talk and give advice; and he was also irritated by the presence of certain persons who considered themselves aristocrats and who came to call on him and point out to him that it was now time to give up the rabble and the indigent and to rise to their level.

If he had not had so much to think about as he did have, he would have found this a good chance to show his aggressive humour; but all his attention was fixed on Amparito.

The newly married pair spent the first days of their honeymoon at Castro; then they went to Madrid, with the intention of going abroad, and afterwards they went back to the town.

The old palace of the Dukes of Castro was witness to their idyll.

At the end of some time Caesar felt tranquil, perhaps too tranquil.

"This, no doubt, is what is called being happy," he used to say to himself. And being happy gave him the impression of a limbo; he felt as though his old personality was dying within him. He could no longer recover his former way of life; all his disquietudes had vanished. He felt that he was balanced, lacking those alternations of courage and cowardice which had previously formed the characteristic thing in him.

It was the oasis after the desert; the calm that follows the storm.

Caesar wondered if he had acquired new nerves. His instinct to be arbitrary was on the downward track.

He could not easily determine what role his wife played in his inner life. He felt the necessity of having her beside him, of talking to her; but he did not understand whether this was mere selfishness, for the sake of the soothing effect her presence produced, or was for the satisfaction of his vanity in seeing how she gave all her thought to him.

Spiritually he did not feel her either identified with him or strange to him; her soul marched along as if parallel to his, but in other paths.

"All that men say about women is completely false," Caesar used to think, "and what women say about themselves, equally so, because they merely repeat what men say. Only when they are completely emanc.i.p.ated will they succeed in understanding themselves. It is indubitable that we have not the same leading ideas, or the same points of view. Probably we have not a similar moral sense either. Neither is woman made for man, nor man for woman. There is necessity between them, not harmony."

Many times, watching Amparito, he told himself:

"There is some sort of machinery in her head that I do not understand."

Noting his scrutinizing gaze, she would ask him:

"What are you thinking about me?"

He would explain his perplexities, and she would laugh.

SYMPATHY

Indubitably, there existed an instinctive accord of the sentiments between Amparito and him, an organic sympathy. She could feel for them both, but he could not think for them both; each mental machine ran in isolation, like two watches, which do not hear each other. She knew whether Caesar was sad or joyful, disheartened or spirited, merely by looking at him. She had no need to ask him; she could read Caesar's face. He could not, on his side, understand what went on behind that little forehead and those moist and sparkling eyes.

"Are you feeling happy? Are you feeling sad?" he would ask her. He could not reach the point of knowing by himself.

"I never succeed in knowing what you want," he sometimes said to her, bitterly.

"Why, you always succeed," she used to reply.

Caesar often wondered if the role of being so much loved, whether wrong or right, was an absurd, offensive thing. In all great affections there is one peculiarity; if one loves a person, one gets to the point of changing that person to an idol inside oneself, and from that moment it seems that the person divides into the unreal idol, which is like a false picture of the adored one, and the living being, who resembles the idolized object very slightly.

Caesar found something absurd in being loved like that. Besides, he found that she was dragging him away from himself. After six months of marriage, she was making him change his ideas and his way of life, and he was having absolutely no influence on her.

Previously he had often thought that if he lived with a woman, he should prefer one that was spiritually foreign to him, who should look on him like a rare plant, not with one that would want to identify herself with his tastes and his sympathies.

With a somewhat hostile woman he would have felt an inclination to be voluble and contradictory; with a sympathetic woman, on the contrary, he would have seemed to himself like a circus runner whom one of his pupils is trying to overtake, and who has to run hard to keep the record where it belongs.

But his wife was neither one nor the other.

Amparito had an extraordinary insouciance, gaiety, facility, in accepting life. Caesar never ceased being amazed. She spent her days working, talking, singing. The slightest diversion enchanted her, the most insignificant gift aroused a lively satisfaction.

"Everything is decided, as far as you are concerned," Caesar used, to tell her.

"By what?"

"By your character."

She laughed at that.

It seemed as if she had chosen the best att.i.tude toward life. She saw that her husband was not religious, but she considered that an attribute of men, and thought that G.o.d must have an especial complacency toward husbands, if only so as not to leave wives alone in paradise.

Amparito held by a fetichistic Catholicism, conditioned by her situation in life, and mixed with a lot of heterodox and contradictory ideas, but she didn't give any thought to that.

The marriage was very successful; they never had disputes or discussions. When both were stubborn, they never noticed which one yielded.

They had rented one rather big floor facing on the Retiro, and they began to furnish it.

Amparito had bad taste in decoration; everything loud pleased her, and sometimes when Caesar laughed, she would say:

"I know I am a crazy country girl. You must tell me how to fix things."

Caesar decided the arrangement of a little reception-room. He chose a light paper for the walls, some coloured engravings, and Empire furniture. Female friends found the room very well done. Amparito used to tell them:

"Yes, Caesar had it done like this," as if that were a weighty argument with everybody.

Amparito and her father persuaded Caesar that he ought to open an office. All the people in Castro lamented that Caesar did not practise law.

He had always felt a great repugnance for that sharpers' and skinflints'

business; but he yielded to please Amparito, and set up his office and took an a.s.sistant who was very skillful in legal tricks. Caesar was often to be found writing in the office, when Amparito opened the door.

"Do you want to come here a moment?" she would say.

"Yes. What is it?"

"Look and see how this hat suits me. How do you like it?"