Chapter IV: Freya (3)

And Freya continued marching on in silence with a compassionate expression in her eyes and in the corners of her mouth. It pleased her pride as a woman to contemplate this strong man stuttering in childish confusion. At the same time she grew impatient at the monotony of his words.

"Don't say any more, Captain," she finally interrupted. "I can guess all that you are going to say, and I've heard many times what you have said,--You do not sleep--you do not eat--you do not live because of me. Your existence is impossible if I do not love you. A little more conversation and you will threaten me with shooting yourself, if I am not yours.... Same old song! They all say the same thing. There are no creatures with less originality than you men when you wish something...."

They were in one of the avenues of the promenade. Through the palm trees and glossy magnolias the luminous gulf could be seen on one side, and on the other the handsome edifices of the beach of Chiaja. Some ragged urchins kept running around them and following them, until they took refuge in an ornamental little white temple at the end of the avenue.

"Very well, then, enamored sea-wolf," continued Freya; "you need not sleep, you need not eat, you may kill yourself if the fancy strikes you; but I am not able to love you; I shall never love you. You may give up all hope; life is not mere diversion and I have other more serious occupations that absorb all my time."

In spite of the playful smile with which she accompanied these words, Ferragut surmised a very firm will.

"Then," he said in despair, "it will all be useless?... Even though I make the greatest sacrifices?... Even though I give proofs of love greater than you have ever known?..."

"All useless," she replied roundly, without a sign of a smile.

They paused before the ornamental little temple-shaped building, with its dome supported by white columns and a railing around it. The bust of Virgil adorned the center,--an enormous head of somewhat feminine beauty.

The poet had died in Naples in "Sweet Parthenope," on his return from Greece and his body, turned to dust, was perhaps mingled with the soil of this garden. The Neapolitan people of the Middle Ages had attributed to him all kinds of wonderful things, even transforming the poet into a powerful magician. The wizard Virgil in one night had constructed the _Castello dell' Ovo_, placing it with his own hands upon a great egg (_Ovo_) that was floating in the sea. He also had opened with his magic blasts the tunnel of Posilipo near which are a vineyard and a tomb visited for centuries as the last resting place of the poet. Little scamps, playing around the railing, used to hurl papers and stones inside the temple. The white head of the powerful sorcerer attracted them and at the same time filled them with admiration and fear.

"Thus far and no further," ordered Freya. "You will continue on your way. I am going to the high part of Chiaja.... But before separating as good friends, you are going to give me your word not to follow me, not to importune me with your amorous attentions, not to mix yourself in my life."

Ulysses did not reply, hanging his head in genuine dismay. To his disillusion was added the sting of wounded pride. He who had imagined such very different things when they should see each other again together, alone!...

Freya pitied his sadness.

"Don't be a Baby!... This will soon pass. Think of your business affairs, and of your family waiting for you over there in Spain.... Besides, the world is full of women; I'm not the only one."

But Ferragut interrupted her. "Yes, she was the only one!... The only one!..." And he said it with a conviction that awakened another one of her compassionate smiles.

This man's tenacity was beginning to irritate her.

"Captain, I know your type very well. You are an egoist, like all other men. Your boat is tied up in the harbor because of an accident; you've got to remain ashore a month; you meet on one of your trips a woman who is idiot enough to admit that she remembers meeting you at other times, and you say to yourself, Magnificent occasion to while away agreeably a tedious period of waiting!...' If I should yield to your desire, within a few weeks, as soon as your boat was ready, the hero of my love, the knight of my dreams, would betake himself to the sea, saying as a parting salute: 'Adieu, simpleton!'"

Ulysses protested with energy. No: he wished that his boat might never be repaired. He was computing with agony the days that remained. If it were necessary, he would abandon it, remaining forever in Naples.

"And what have I to do in Naples?" interrupted Freya. "I am a mere bird of passage here, just as you are. We knew each other on the seas of another hemisphere, and we have just happened to run across each other here in Italy. Next time, if we ever meet again, it will be in Japan or Canada or the Cape.... Go on your way, you enamored old shark, and let me go mine. Imagine to yourself that we are two boats that have met when becalmed, have signaled each other, have exchanged greetings, have wished each other good luck, and afterwards have continued on our way, perhaps never to see each other again."

Ferragut shook his head negatively. Such a thing could not be, he could not resign himself to losing sight of her forever.

"These men!" she continued, each time a little more irritated. "You all imagine that things must be arranged entirely according to your caprices. 'Because I desire thee, thou must be mine....' And what if I don't want to?... And if I don't feel any necessity of being loved?... If I wish only to live in liberty, with no other love than that which I feel for myself?..."

She considered it a great misfortune to be a woman. She always envied men for their independence. They could hold themselves aloof, abstaining from the passions that waste life, without anybody's coming to importune them in their retreat. They were at liberty to go wherever they wanted to, to travel the wide world over, without leaving behind their footsteps a wake of solicitors.

"You appear to me, Captain, a very charming man. The other day I was delighted to meet you; it was an apparition from the past; I saw in you the joy of my youth that is beginning to fade away, and the melancholy of certain recollections.... And nevertheless, I am going to end by hating you. Do you hear me, you tedious old Argonaut?... I shall loathe you because you will not be a mere friend; because you know only how to talk everlastingly about the same thing; because you are a person out of a novel, a Latin, very interesting, perhaps, to other women,--but insufferable to me."

Her face contracted with a gesture of scorn and pity. "Ah, those Latins!..."

"They're all the same,--Spaniards, Italians, Frenchmen.... They were born for the same thing. They hardly meet an attractive woman but they believe that they are evading their obligations if they do not beg for her love and what comes afterward.... Cannot a man and woman simply be friends? Couldn't you be just a good comrade and treat me as a companion?"

Ferragut protested energetically. No; no, he couldn't. He loved her and, after being repelled with such cruelty, his love would simply go on increasing. He was sure of that.

A nervous tremor made Freya's voice sharp and cutting, and her eyes took on a dangerous gleam. She looked at her companion as though he were an enemy whose death she longed for.

"Very well, then, if you must know it. I abominate all men; I abominate them, because I know them so well. I would like the death of all of them, of every one!... The evil that they have wrought in my life!... I would like to be immensely beautiful, the handsomest woman on earth, and to possess the intellect of all the sages concentrated in my brain, to be rich and to be a queen, in order that all the men of the world, crazy with desire, would come to prostrate themselves before me.... And I would lift up my feet with their iron heels, and I would go trampling over them, crushing their heads ... so ... and so ... and so!..."

She struck the sands of the garden with the soles of her little shoes. An hysterical sneer distorted her mouth.

"Perhaps I might make an exception of you.... You who, with all your braggart arrogance, are, after all, outright and simple-hearted. I believe you capable of assuring a woman of all kinds of love-lies ... believing them yourself most of all. But the others!... _Ay, the others!_... How I hate them!..."

She looked over toward the palace of the Aquarium, glistening white between the colonnade of trees.

"I would like to be," she continued pensively, "one of those animals of the sea that can cut with their claws, that have arms like scissors, saws, pincers ... that devour their own kind, and absorb everything around them."

Then she looked at the branch of a tree from which were hanging several silver threads, sustaining insects with active tentacles.

"I would like to be a spider, an enormous spider, that all men might be drawn to my web as irresistibly as flies. With what satisfaction would I crunch them between my claws! How I would fasten my mouth against their hearts!... And I would suck them.... I would suck them until there wasn't a drop of blood left, tossing away then their empty carcasses!..."

Ulysses began to wonder if he had fallen in love with a crazy woman. His disquietude, his surprise and questioning eyes gradually restored Freya's serenity.

She passed one hand across her forehead, as though awakening from a nightmare and wishing to banish remembrance with this gesture. Her glance became calmer.

"Good-by, Ferragut; do not make me talk any more. You will soon doubt my reason.... You are doing so already. We shall be friends, just friends and nothing more. It is useless to think of anything else.... Do not follow me.... We shall see each other.... I shall hunt you up.... Good-by!... Good-by!"

And although Ferragut felt tempted to follow her, he remained motionless, seeing her hurry rapidly away, as though fleeing from the words that she had just let fall before the little temple of the poet.