And then one day Cavañitas suffered a tremendous punishment. Cavañitas, who was very skilled with the sling, had brought the school dog down with a stone in the head and the dog had to be shot.
That was fate and the first sign of protest which started me into action. When Cavañitas came out from his punishment, I embraced him and told him to let me have a sling.
That night as I went home I held the sling in my hand and carried my boina full of stones; of freshly hammered stones, with good sharp edges, just right in size. And I knew that I was almost as good as Cavañitas with the sling, that I seldom missed the mark, and what is more, I knew well that a sling properly used can throw a stone with a terrific force.
That night I was feverish, there was rage in my heart which I have seldom felt afterwards. When I reached the street, I stood at one end and saw it stretch before me, narrow and long. Only a lamp post at the other end. A shadow detached itself from one of the walls and stood in the center. It was the dog and he began to bark.
That had the effect of a lash on me. I remember hearing the sling whiz and a prolonged howl. I was in a paroxysm. I remember the dog receding and I chasing him viciously with one stone after another until I could see the dog no more.
I was possessed of an infernal fury, I felt the blood pounding my temples, and then a window opened and the dog’s master appeared and said something about the dog. I cursed him and used the foulest language I had learned. He tried to threaten me and then I slung a stone against his window and followed it with another and the glass clattered down. I remember telling him that I wanted to kill his dog and him, too. And then he went back inside calling me insane and mad, and I think he was right and I ran home.
When they opened the door, I broke down and cried. I don’t remember what I said except that I did not intend to study any more or that if I went back to that school I would murder a priest. I cried and cursed and for once was not reprimanded for it. My mother soothed me and told me to be calm and not to fear, that I did not have to study if I did not want to, that I was not going back to school, that I could do what I pleased and sleep as long as I washed. Then I remember her saying something about anemia and she was loving and I felt a great relief and during the days that followed I drank something bitter before meals.
Soon after that we left Vizcaitia and returned to Madrid.
As I have said, everything in those days seems foggy, my brain was in a turmoil. I was very sleepy and tired and had become too high-strung. Now I only see a great confusion and out of that maelstrom of sentiments and ideas, three strange pictures: A woman with her heart pierced by many arrows, a man on a cross, bleeding, with a crown of thorns on his head, and a still more puzzling picture with only a heart aflame. And either my childish intuition or my overwrought imagination of those days found a strange connection between those pictures and a man and a woman whose lives are bound together in my memory by a subtle romantic feeling. All fades then before the dazzling vision of a woman advancing toward me on a great white horse. then everything goes black and there are two dogs, two great big dogs, barking in the darkness.
II. Spring
I
My knowledge of the early youth of my friend Garcia is very limited. I know that he was born at the beginning of spring. This is, however, too coincidental a thing to have any bearing upon his case.
Nevertheless, as an infant he was known to be fond of flowers and the sign of anything pertaining to spring brought from him actions and sounds revealing a profound inner delight.
Then came a marked change. I remember him as a boy when we both attended the Colegio de los Padres Salesianos in Vizcaitia. He was pale and thin, with pimpled complexion and a strong tendency to dreaminess and melancholia. These qualities seemed to grow more intense during the spring, a thing which by contrast became more apparent to his companions as we always felt rather happy at the approach of the summer holiday. During these spells, he went about alone and did not mix or play with the other boys.
At first we attributed his attitude to worry about the coming examinations, but later I realized that it must have been due to some other cause as he studied less during those periods and appeared absent-minded and distracted in class, and consistently fell back in his marks.
Then Garcia left Vizcaitia and I did not see him again until I returned to Madrid, where I came in contact with him through mutual acquaintances. It was through these acquaintances that I learned that he wore long hair, wrote poetry and asked his friends for money. Garcia did not work and led an aimless life, a thing in which most of his friends envied him secretly. This, at least, is what I gathered from their comments.
I remember one day in a café, when a friend asked him point-blank:
“Garcia, don’t you ever feel a desire to work?”
Garcia was sipping a glass of manzanilla. He finished it without haste and answered:
“Yes, but I do my best to repress it.”
From that day my friendship with Garcia was established.
And then, one day I had the first clear glimpse into his life hobby.
We were walking in the Retiro, and I had just become positively aware of the fact that Garcia looked worn out and shabby, exaggeratedly old for his age. His hair was long and quite gray. This was in the month of May.
Garcia was telling me about some poems he was writing or was about to write.
Suddenly, he left my side and advanced ahead. He staggered forth, his head up, his arms stretched in front as if drawn by a vision, and leaned on a big tree.
When I overtook him, there was a strange glow in his face, an expression of infinite joy and happiness which surprised me, and he exclaimed as if finishing our interrupted conversation:
“It is this. it is this. ” and he caressed the tree with a gesture which included the whole scenery. “This eternal season that never fails.”
His face contrasted with the sadness of his frame. The day was lukewarm, the air was balmy and all was still. There was a feeling of expectancy. Garcia went on:
“Do you smell those flowers? Can you hear the rustle of the breeze among the foliage? Can you see the lace of light and shadow the trees weave upon the ground?”
My mind told me that all this was secondhand literature and I knew that Garcia always had a lyric way of expressing himself. But I could not rid myself of the poetry of the moment, I felt caught in a trap of sentimentalism and Garcia carried suggestion in his words and in his countenance. He spoke as if in a rapture:
“This is what makes life worth living. Life itself. ”
“Yes, El Retiro is very beautiful, it is one of the most poetic parks I have seen.” I also wanted to put in a word.
Garcia shook his hand in the air as if wiping my words off an imaginary slate:
“It is not that. it is the season, it is this season that never fails. It is this great compensation to all our troubles and disappointments. I have come to depend on nothing else.”
There was a pause.
Garcia went on: “You don’t know what this means to me. It reconciles me to life every year. It brings me the greatest happiness that I have known. It is what we all hope for, consciously or subconsciously. It is the hope of mankind. Spring means to me what it should mean to you and to everybody, but people seem to go about their business unaware of days like this. They go after petty things and then they are disappointed. They are always hoping for something they think they never can attain, and what they are hoping for is spring, the thing that never fails, the thing on which we can bank everything, the thing to which we should be ever thankful. They do not realize that it is at hand, that it comes to their aid every year. A man may be in misery, he may have no food or no place to sleep. In winter this is hard and he will fear, but then on comes the spring and he fears no more. Spring brings warmth, and fruits and flowers, it brings abundance of life, it brings us safety. But people don’t realize this, and they continue to go about with the same cheap winter-providing attitude, oblivious of this great thing that is going on, oblivious of everything important. I feel as if I were the only man who has discovered spring.”