Mare Nostrum | Page 9

"What do you want to be?" Labarta asked his godson.
His mother's supplicating glance seemed desperately to implore the
little fellow: "Say Archbishop, my king." For the good señora, her son
could not make his début in any other way than in a church career. The
notary always used to speak very positively from his own viewpoint,
without consulting the interested party. He would be an eminent
jurisconsult; thousands of dollars were going to roll toward him as
though they were pennies; he was going to figure in university
solemnities in a cloak of crimson satin and an academic cap
announcing from its multiple sides the tasseled glory of the doctorate.
The students in his lecture-room would listen to him most respectfully.
Who knew what the government of his country might not have in store
for him!...
Ulysses interrupted these images of future grandeur:
"I want to be a captain."
The poet approved. He felt the unreflective enthusiasm which all
pacific and sedentary beings have for the plume and the sword. At the
mere sight of a uniform his soul always thrilled with the amorous
tenderness of a child's nurse when she finds herself courted by a
soldier.
"Fine!" said Labarta. "Captain of what?... Of artillery?... Of the
staff?..."
A pause.
"No; captain of a ship."
Don Esteban looked up at the roof, raising his hands in horror. He well
knew who was guilty of this ridiculous idea, the one who had put such

absurd longings in his son's head!
And he was thinking of his brother, the retired doctor, who was living
in the paternal home over there in the Marina:--an excellent man, but a
little crazy, whom the people on the coast called the Dotor, and the
poet Labarta had nicknamed the Triton.
CHAPTER II
MATER AMPHITRITE
When the Triton occasionally appeared in Valencia, thrifty Doña
Cristina was obliged to modify the dietary of her family. This man ate
nothing but fish, and her soul of an economical housewife worried
greatly at the thought of the extraordinarily high price that fish brings
in a port of exportation.
Life in that house, where everything always jogged along so uniformly,
was greatly upset by the presence of the doctor. A little after daybreak,
just when its inhabitants were usually enjoying the dessert of their
night's sleep, hearing drowsily the rumble of the early morning carts
and the bell-ringing of the first Masses, the house would reëcho to the
rude banging of doors and heavy footsteps making the stairway creak.
It was the Triton rushing out on the street, incapable of remaining
between four walls after the first streak of light. Following the currents
of the early morning life, he would reach the market, stopping before
the flower stands where were the most numerous gatherings of women.
The eyes of the women turned toward him instinctively with an
expression of interest and fear. Some blushed as he passed by,
imagining against their will what an embrace from this hideous and
restless Colossus must be.
"He is capable of crushing a flea on his arm," the sailors of his village
used to boast when trying to emphasize the hardness of his biceps. His
body lacked fat, and under his swarthy skin bulged great, rigid and
protruding muscles--an Herculean texture from which had been
eliminated every element incapable of producing strength. Labarta

found in him a great resemblance to the marine divinities. He was
Neptune before his head had silvered, or Poseidon as the primitive
Greek poets had seen him with hair black and curly, features tanned by
the salt air, and with a ringleted beard whose two spiral ends seemed
formed by the dripping of the water of the sea. The nose somewhat
flattened by a blow received in his youth, and the little eyes, oblique
and tenacious, gave to his countenance an expression of Asiatic ferocity,
but this impression melted away when his mouth parted in a smile,
showing his even, glistening teeth, the teeth of a man of the sea
accustomed to live upon salt food.
During the first few days of his visit he would wander through the
streets wavering and bewildered. He was afraid of the carriages; the
patter of the passers-by on the pavements annoyed him; he, who had
seen the most important ports of both hemispheres, complained of the
bustle in the capital of a province. Finally he would instinctively take
the road from the harbor in search of the sea, his eternal friend, the first
to salute him every morning upon opening the door of his own home
down there on the Marina.
On these excursions he would oftentimes be accompanied by his little
nephew. The bustle on the docks,--(the creaking of the cranes, the dull
rumble of the carts, the deafening cries of the freighters),--always had