The Torrent Part 8

Fortunately, just as the huge, dark ma.s.s of human beings was beginning to surge in indignation at his silence, and hisses and shouts of anger were being raised, Rafael appeared.

Dona Bernarda had sent him out at the first sign of uneasiness in the populace. It was in circ.u.mstances such as these that her husband used to shine, taking the helm in every crisis, giving orders and settling questions, though to no avail at all. But when the river returned to its normal level, and danger was past, the peasant would remember don Ramon's "sacrifices" and call him the father of the poor. If the miraculous saint must come out, let Rafael be the one to produce him!

The elections were at hand. The flood could not have come in better time. There must be no false steps, no frightening opportunity away.

Something rather must be done to get people to talking about him as they used to talk about his father on similar occasions.

So Rafael, after having the purpose of this demonstration explained to him by the most ardent of the leaders, gave a magnificent gesture of consent:

"Granted; have _San Bernat_ brought out!"

With a thunder of applause and _vivas_ for young Brull, the black avalanche headed rumbling for the church.

They must now persuade the curate to take the saint out, and that good priest--a fat, kindly, but rather shrewd fellow--always objected to what he called a bit of old-fashioned mummery. The truth was he looked forward with little pleasure to a tramp out in the rain at the head of a procession, trying to keep dry under an umbrella, with his _soutane_ rolled up to his knees, and his shoes coming off at every step in the mire. Besides, some day, in the very face of San Bernardo, the river might carry half the city off, and then what a fix, what a fix, religion would be in, all on account of those disturbers of the peace!

Rafael and his henchmen of the _Ayuntamiento_ tried their hardest to convince the curate; but his only reply was to ask whether water was coming down from Cuenca.

"I believe it is," said the _alcalde_. "You can see that makes the danger worse. It's more than ever necessary to bring out the saint."

"Well, if there's water coming down from Cuenca," the priest answered, "we'd better let it come, and San Bernardo also had better keep indoors, at home. Matters concerning saints must be treated with great discretion, take my word for that.... And, if you don't agree with me, just remember that freshet when the river got above the bridges. We brought the saint out, and the river almost carried him off downstream."

The crowd, growing restless at the delay, began to shout against the priest. The good sense of that canny churchman was powerless in the face of superst.i.tions instilled by centuries of fanaticism.

"Since you will it so, so let it be," he said gravely. "Let the Saint come forth, and may the Lord have mercy on us!"

A frenzied acclamation burst from the crowd, which now filled the whole square in front of the church. The rain continued falling, and above the serried ranks of heads covered with skirts, cloaks, and an occasional umbrella, the flames of the tapers flickered, staining the wet faces red.

The people smiled happily in all their discomfort from the downpour.

Confident of success, they were foretasting gleefully the terror of the stream at sight of the blessed image entering its waters. What could not San Bernardo do? His marvelous history, a blend of Moorish and Christian romance, flamed in all those credulous imaginations. He was a saint native to that region--the second son of the Moorish king of Carlet.

Through his talent, courtesy and beauty he won such success at court in Valencia, that he rose to the post of prime minister.

Once when his sovereign had to have some dealings with the king of Aragon, he sent San Bernardo, who at that time was called Prince Hamete, to Barcelona. During his journey he drew up one night at the portal of the monastery of Poblet. The chants of the Cistercians, drifting mystical and vague through the Gothic arches, moved the Saracen youth to the bottom of his soul. He felt drawn to the religion of his enemies by the magic of its poetry. He received baptism, a.s.sumed the white habit of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, and later returned to the kingdom of Valencia to preach Christianity. There he enjoyed the tolerance Saracen monarchs always had for new religious doctrines. He converted his two sisters--beautiful Mooresses they were--and they took the names of Gracia and Maria, and aflame in turn with pious fervor, they chose to go with their brother on his tour of preachment.

But the old king of Carlet had died, and his first-born--the arrogant Almanzor, a brutal, vainglorious Moor--succeeded to the rulership of the tiny state--a sort of military satrapy. This haughty potentate, offended in his magnificence to see members of his family traveling over the roads dressed like vagabonds and preaching a religion of beggars, called a troop of horse and set out in pursuit of his brother and sisters. He came upon them near Alcira, hiding on the riverbank. With one slash of his sword he cut the heads off both his sisters; San Bernardo he crucified and drove a big nail through his forehead. Thus the sacred preacher perished, but all the humble continued to adore him; for here was a handsome prince, who had turned to a poor man, become a wandering mendicant even--a sacrifice that endeared him to the poorest of his votaries. Of all this that crowd of peasants was thinking as it shouted _vivas_ to San Bernardo, now, surely, prime minister of G.o.d, as he had been of the pagan king of Valencia.

The procession was rapidly organized. Along the narrow lanes of the island where the rain coursed in streams, people kept coming in droves.

They were barefoot for the most part, but some were sinking shoes indifferently into the water. Most of them had tapers or shotguns. The women did their best to shelter little ones under the skirts they had gathered about their heads. The musicians, all barefoot, were in regular uniform--gold braided jackets and plumed hats--looking for all the world like Malay chiefs who beautify their nakedness with castoff coats and three-cornered hats the missionaries give them.

In front of the church the lights of the tapers blended into one great flare. Through the wide doorway the candles on the altars gleamed like a distant constellation.

The whole neighborhood, almost, had a.s.sembled in the square, despite the increasing rain. Many had come to scoff. What a farce it all would be!

They did well, however, to wait two days! The rain was almost over. It would probably stop by the time they got the Saint out!

In double file of tapers the procession began to move between two lines of tightly jammed spectators.

"_Vitol el pare San Bernat!_ Hurrah for father San Bernardo!" a mult.i.tude of hoa.r.s.e voices cried.

"_Vitol les chermanetes_! Hurrah for his sisters!" others added, to correct the lack of gallantry displayed by the most enthusiastic of the idolators in putting ladies last.

For the sisters, the holy martyrs, Gracia and Maria, also figured in the procession. San Bernardo never went anywhere alone. As even children in baby-school knew, not a power on earth, not all the men and horses in the orchards put together, could lift the saint from his altar unless his sisters went first. That was one of his miracles long accredited by tradition. He had very little confidence in women--less pious commentators said--and not willing to trust his sisters out of sight, he insisted that they precede him whenever he left his pedestal.

The holy sisters appeared in the church doorway, swaying on their litters above the heads of the worshippers.

"_Vitol les chermanetes!_"

And the poor _chermanetes_, dripping from every fold of their vestments, came out into that dark, tempestuous, rain-soaked atmosphere that was rent by sheaves of crude light from the tapers.

The musicians tuned their instruments, ready to break into the Royal March! In the brilliantly lighted doorway something shining could be seen laboriously advancing, swaying this way and that, as if the waves of an angry sea were rocking it.

The crowd again began to cheer, and the music sounded.

"_Vitol el pare San Bernat!_"

But the music and the acclamations were drowned by a deafening crash, as if the island had suddenly burst into a thousand pieces, dragging the city to the depths of the Abyss. The square was shooting a fusillade of lightning flashes, a veritable cannonade. Those ancient arms, blunderbusses, muzzle-loaders, pistols, crammed full of powder, could roar like artillery. All the guns in the neighborhood were saluting the appearance of the Saint. And the crowd, drunk with the smell of powder, began to shout and gesticulate in the presence of that bronze image, whose round, kindly face--that of a healthy well-fed friar--seemed to quiver with life in the light of the torches.

Eight strong men, almost naked, came forward staggering under the weight of the metal saint. The crowd surged against them, threatening to upset the statue. But two bare-breasted strong-armed boys, devotees of the patron, were marching on either side, and they fought the mult.i.tude back.

The women, shoved hither and thither and almost suffocated in the jam, burst into tears as their gaze fell upon the miraculous image.

"_Ay_, father San Bernardo! Father San Bernardo! Save us! Save us!"

Others dragged children out from the folds of their skirts, and held them out above their heads toward the powerful guards.

"Lift him up! Let him kiss the Saint!"

And those muscular peasants would pick the children up like dolls, now by an arm, now by a leg, now by the nape of the neck, raise them to a level with the saint, that they might kiss the bronze face, and then toss them back into the arms of their mothers, working like automatons, dropping one child to seize another, with the regularity of machines in action. Many times the impact was too rough; the noses of the children would flatten against the folds of the metallic garb; but the fervor of the crowd seemed to infect the little ones. They were the future adorers of the Moorish monk. Rubbing their bruises with their soft little hands they would swallow their tears and return to their snug places in their mothers' skirts.

Behind the glorious saint marched Rafael and the gentlemen of the _Ayuntamiento_ with long wax tapers; and after them the curate, grumbling as he heard the first dashes of rain beat on the large red silk umbrella which the sacristan held over him, and felt the impact of the crowd of orchard-folk, that was mixed at random with the musicians.

The latter, paying more attention to where they stepped than to their instruments, played a rather discordant march. Guns, meanwhile, continued to blaze away. The wild cheering for San Bernardo and his sisters went on; and, framed in a red nimbus of torch-light, greeted at every street-corner by a new fusillade, the image sailed along over that sea of heads, pelted by the rain, which, in the light of the candles, looked like a maze of transparent crystal threads. Around the saint the arms of the athletes kept ever moving, lifting children up to b.u.mp their drooling noses on the bronze of father San Bernardo. Balconies and windows along the way were filled with women, their heads protected by their skirts.

Sighs, wails, exclamations of entreaty welcomed the pa.s.sing saint in a chorus of despair and hope.

"Save us, father San Bernardo!... Save us!..."

The procession reached the river, crossing and recrossing the bridges that led to the suburbs. The flickering torches were mirrored in the dark edges of the stream, which was growing momentarily more terrifying and clamorous. The water had not yet reached the railing, as at other times. Miracle! San Bernardo was at work already!

Then the procession marched to points where the river had flooded the lanes near the bank, and turned them to virtual ponds. The more fanatical of the devotees, lifting their tapers above their heads, went out fearlessly neck high into the water: for surely the Saint must not go in alone.

One old man, shaking with malaria, caught in the rice-fields, and hardly able to hold the taper in his trembling hands, hesitated at the brink of the stream.

"Go on in, _aguelo_!" the women encouraged affectionately. "Father San Bernardo will cure you. Don't lose such a chance!"

When the saint was out performing miracles, he might remember the old man, too. So _aguelo_--"grandaddy"--shivering in his drenched clothes and his teeth chattering, walked resolutely in.

The statue was making its way very slowly along the inundated streets, for the feet of the bearers sank deep into the water under their load; and they could advance at all only with the aid of the faithful, who gathered about the litter on all sides to help. A writhing ma.s.s of bare, sinewy arms rose from the water like tentacles of a human octopus to carry the Saint along.

Just behind the image came the curate and the political dignitaries, riding astride the shoulders of some enthusiasts who, for the greater pomp of the ceremony, were willing to serve as mounts, though the tapers of their riders kept getting into their faces.

The curate began to feel the cold water creeping up his back, and ordered the Saint insh.o.r.e again. In fact San Bernardo was already at the end of the lane, and actually in the river itself. His guards of honor were having a time of it to keep their feet in the face of the current, but they were still willing to go on, believing that the farther the statue went into the stream, the sooner the waters would go down. At last, however, the most foolhardy withdrew. The Saint came back. Though the procession at once went on to the next road and to the next, repeating the same performance.

And suddenly it stopped raining.