Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) Part 32

"Yes, it is a _huaca_," she said. "I have been in that, too.... We were engaged in manufacturing antiques."

Freya misunderstood the gesture that her lover made. She thought that he was astonished at the audacity of this manufacture of souvenirs.

"Germany is great; nothing can resist the adaptive powers of her industries...."

And her eyes burned with a proud light as she enumerated these exploits of false historical resurrection. They had filled museums and private collections with Egyptian and Phoenician statuettes recently reproduced. Then, on German soil, they had manufactured Peruvian antiquities in order to sell them to the tourists who visit the ancient realm of the Incas. Some of the inhabitants received wages for disinterring these things opportunely with a great deal of publicity.

Now the fad of the moment was the black art, and collectors were hunting horrible wooden idols carved by tribes in the interior of Africa.

But what had really impressed Ferragut was the plural which she had employed in speaking of such industries. Who had fabricated these Peruvian antiquities?... Was it her husband, the sage?...

"No," replied Freya tranquilly. "It was another one--an artist from Munich. He had hardly any talent for painting, but great intelligence in business matters. We returned from Peru with the mummy of an Inca which we exhibited in almost all the museums of Europe without finding a purchaser. Bad business! We had to keep the Inca in our room in the hotel, and ..."

Ferragut was not interested in the wanderings of the poor Indian monarch, s.n.a.t.c.hed from the repose of his tomb.... One more! Each of Freya's confidences evoked a new predecessor from the haze of her past.

Coming out of the beer-garden, the captain stalked along with a gloomy aspect. She, on the other hand, was laughing at her memories surveying across the years, with a flattering optimism, this far-away adventure of her Bohemian days, and growing very merry on recalling the remains of the Inca on his pa.s.sage from hotel to hotel.

Suddenly Ulysses' wrath blazed forth.... The Dutch, officer, the natural history sage, the singer who killed himself in one shot and now the fabricator of antiquities.... How many more men had there been in her existence? How many were there still to be told of? Why had she not brought them all out at once?...

Freya was astounded at his abrupt violence. The sailor's wrath was terrifying. Then she laughed, leaning heavily on his arm, and putting her face close to his.

"You are jealous!... My shark is jealous! Go on talking. You don't know how much I like to hear you. Complain away!... Beat me!... It's the first time that I've seen a jealous man. Ah, you Southerners!...

Meridionals!... With good reason the women adore you."

And she was telling the truth. She was experiencing a new sensation before this manly wrath, provoked by amorous indignation. Ulysses appeared to her a very different man from all the others she had known in her former life,--cold, compliant and selfish.

"My Ferragut!... My Mediterranean hero! How I love you! Come ...

come.... I must reward you!"

They were in a central street, near the corner of a sloping little alley with stairs. She pushed him toward it, and at the first step in the narrow and dark pa.s.sageway embraced him, turning her back on the movement and light in the great street, in order to kiss him with that kiss which always made the captain's knees tremble.

Although his temper was soothed, he continued complaining during the rest of the stroll. How many had preceded him?... He must know. He wished to know, no matter how horrible the knowledge might be. It was the delight of the jealous who persist in scratching open the wound.

"I want to know you," he repeated. "I ought to know you, since you belong to me. I have the right!..."

This right recalled with childish obstinacy made Freya smile dolorously. Long centuries of experience appeared to peep out from the melancholy curl of her lips. In her gleamed the wisdom of the woman, more cautious and foresighted than that of the man, since love was her only preoccupation.

"Why do you wish to know?" she asked discouragingly. "How much further could you go on that?... Would you perchance be any happier when you did know?..."

She was silent for some steps and then said as though disclosing a secret:

"In order to love, it is not necessary for us to know one another.

Quite the contrary. A little bit of mystery keeps up the illusion and dispells monotony.... He who wishes to know is never happy."

She continued talking. Truth perhaps was a good thing in other phases of existence, but it was fatal to love. It was too strong, too crude.

Love was like certain women, beautiful as G.o.ddesses under a discreet and artificial light, but horrible as monsters under the burning splendors of the sun.

"Believe me; put away these bugbears of the past. Is not the present enough for you?... Are you not happy?"

And, trying to convince him that he was, she redoubled her exertions, chaining Ulysses in bonds which were sweet yet weighed heavily upon him. Strongly convinced of his vileness, he nevertheless adored and detested this woman, with her tireless sensuality.... And it was impossible to separate himself from her!...

Anxious to find some excuse, he recalled the image of his cook philosophizing in his culinary dominion. Whenever he had wished to call down the greatest of evils upon an enemy, the astute fellow had always uttered this anathema:

"May G.o.d send you a female to your taste!..."

Ferragut had found the "female to his taste" and was forever slave of his destiny. It would follow him through every form of debas.e.m.e.nt which she might desire, and each time would leave him with less energy to protest, accepting the most disgraceful situations in exchange for love.... And it would always be so! And he who but a few months before used to consider himself a hard and overbearing man, would end by pleading and weeping if she should go away!... Ah, misery!...

In hours of tranquillity, when satiety made them converse placidly like two friends of the same s.e.x, Ulysses would avoid allusions to the past, questioning her only about her actual life. These questions were chiefly concerned with the doctor's mysterious work; he wished to know with the interest that the slightest actions of a beloved person always inspire, the part that Freya was playing in them. Did he not belong now to the same a.s.sociation since he was obeying its orders?...

The responses were very incomplete. She had limited herself to obeying the doctor, who knew everything.... Then she hesitated and corrected herself. No, her friend could not know everything, because above her were the count and other personages who used to come from time to time to visit her like pa.s.sing tourists. And the chain of agents, from the lowest to the highest, were lost in mysterious heights that made Freya turn pale, imposing on her eyes and voice an expression of superst.i.tious respect.

She was free to speak only of her work, and she did this very cautiously, relating the measures she had employed, but without mentioning her co-workers nor stating what her final aim was to be. The most of the time she had been moved about without knowing toward what her efforts were converging, like a whirling wheel which knows only its immediate environments and is ignorant of the machinery as a whole and the cla.s.s of production to which it contributes.

Ulysses marveled at the grotesque and dubious proceedings employed by the agents of the spy system.

"But that is like the paper novels! They are ridiculous and worn-out measures that any one can learn from books and melodramas."

Freya a.s.sented. For that very reason they were employing them. The surest way of bewildering the enemy was to avail themselves of obvious methods; thus the modern world, so intelligent and subtle, would refuse to believe in them. By simply telling the truth, Bismarck had deceived all European diplomacy, for the very reason that n.o.body was expecting the truth from his lips.

German espionage was comporting itself like the personages in a political novel, and people consequently could not seem to believe in it,--although it was taking place right under their eyes,--just because its methods appeared too exaggerated and antiquated.

"Therefore," she continued, "every time that France uncovers a part of our maneuvers, the opinion of the world which believes only in ingenious and difficult things ridicules it, considering it attacked with a delirium of persecution."

Women for some time past had been deeply involved in the service of espionage. There were many as wise as the doctor, as elegant as Freya, and many venerable ones with famous names, winning the confidence that ill.u.s.trious dowagers inspire. They were very numerous, but they did not know each other. Sometimes they met out in the world and were suspicious of each other, but each continued on her special mission, pushed in different directions by an omnipotent and hidden force.

She showed him some portraits that were taken a few years before.

Ulysses was slow to recognize her as a slim j.a.panese young girl, clad in a dark kimono.

"It is I when I was over there. It was to our interest to know the real force of that nation of little men with rat-like eyes."

In another portrait she appeared in short skirt, riding boots, a man's shirt, and a felt cowboy hat.

"That was from the Transvaal."

She had gone to South Africa in company with other German women of the "service" in order to sound the state of mind of the Boers under English domination.

"I've been everywhere," she affirmed proudly.

"In Paris, too?" questioned the sailor.

She hesitated before answering, but finally nodded her head.... She had been in Paris many times. The outbreak of the war had found her living in the Grand Hotel. Fortunately, two days before the rupture of hostilities, she had received news enabling her to avoid being made prisoner in a concentration camp.... And she did not wish to say more.

She was verbose and frank in the relation of her far-distant experiences, but the memory of the more recent ones enshrouded her in a restless and frightened reserve.

To change the course of conversation, she spoke of the dangers that had threatened her on her journeys.

"We have to be very courageous.... The doctor, just as you see her, is a heroine.... You laugh, but if you should know her a.r.s.enal, perhaps it might strike fear to your heart. She is a scientist."

The grave lady had an invincible repugnance for vulgar weapons, and Freya referred freely to a portable medicine case full of anesthetics and poisons.

"Besides this she carries on her person a little bag full of certain powders of her own invention,--tobacco, red pepper.... Perfect little devils! Whoever gets them in the eyes is blinded for life. It is as though she were throwing flames."