Mare Nostrum | Page 6

persecutors. Venerable leather volumes decorated with dull gold, and
folios of white parchment fell face downward on the floor, their
fastenings breaking apart and spreading abroad a rain of printed or
manuscript pages and yellowing engravings--as though tired of living,
they were letting their life-blood flow from their bodies.
The uproar of these wars of conquest brought Doña Cristina to the
rescue. She no longer cared to harbor little imps who preferred the
adventurous whoops of the garret to the mystic delights of the
abandoned chapel. The Indians were most worthy of execration. In
order to make splendor of attire counterbalance the humility of their
role, they had slashed their sinful scissors into entire tapestries,
mutilating vestments so as to arrange upon their breasts the head of a
hero or goddess.
Finding himself without playfellows, Ulysses discovered a new
enchantment in the garret life. The silence haunted by the creaking of
wood and the scampering of invisible animals, the inexplicable fall of a
picture or of some piled-up books, used to make him thrill with a
sensation of fear and nocturnal mystery, despite the rays of sunlight
that came filtering in through the skylights; but he began to enjoy this

solitude when he found that he could people it to his fancy. Real beings
soon annoyed him like the inopportune sounds that sometimes awoke
him from beautiful dreams. The garret was a world several centuries
old that now belonged entirely to him and adjusted itself to all his
fancies.
Seated in a trunk without a lid, he made it balance itself, imitating with
his mouth the roarings of the tempest. It was a caravel, a galleon, a ship
such as he had seen in the old books, its sails painted with lions and
crucifixes, a castle on the poop and a figure-head carved on the prow
that dipped down into the waves, only to reappear dripping with foam.
The trunk, by dint of vigorous pushing, could be made to reach the
rugged coast at the corner of the old chest, the triangular gulf made of
two chests of drawers, and the smooth beach formed by some bundles
of clothes. And the navigator, followed by a crew as numerous as it was
imaginary, would leap ashore, sword in hand, scaling some mountains
of books that were the Andes, and piercing various volumes with the
tip of an old lance in order to plant his standard there. Oh, why had he
not been one of the conquerors?...
Fragments of a conversation between his godfather and his father, who
believed everything was already known regarding the surface of the
earth, left him unconvinced. Something must still be left for him to
discover! He was the meeting point of two families of sailors. His
mother's brothers had ships on the coast of Catalunia. His father's
ancestors had been valorous and obscure navigators, and there in the
Marina was his uncle, the doctor, a genuine man of the sea.
When he grew tired of these imaginative orgies, he used to examine the
portraits of different epochs stowed away in the garret. He preferred
those of the women--noble dames with short-cropped, curled hair
bound by a knot of ribbon on the temple, like those that Velazquez
loved to paint, and long faces of the century following, with
cherry-colored mouth, two patches on the cheeks, and a tower of white
hair. The memory of the Grecian basilisa appeared to emanate from
these paintings. All the high-born dames seemed to have something in
common with her.

Among the portraits of the men there was one of a bishop that irritated
him by its absurd childishness. He appeared almost his own age, an
adolescent bishop, with imperious and aggressive eyes. These eyes
used to inspire the sensitive lad with a certain terror, and he therefore
decided to have done with them. "Take that!" and he ran his sword
through the old chipped picture, making two gashes replace the
challenging eyes. Then he added a few gashes more for good measure....
That same evening, his godfather having been invited to supper, the
notary spoke of a certain portrait acquired a few months before in the
neighborhood of Játiva, a city that he had always regarded with interest
on account of the Borgias having been born in one of its suburbs. The
two men were of the same opinion. That almost infantile prelate could
have been no other than Caesar Borgia, made Archbishop of Valencia
when sixteen years old by his father, the Pope. On their first free day
they would examine the portrait with particular attention.... And
Ulysses, hanging his head, felt every mouthful sticking in his throat.
For the fanciful lad, a pleasure even more intense and substantial than
his lonely games in the garret was a visit to his godfather's