“Camila Perichole kisses the hands of Your Excellency and says—
No, take another piece of paper and begin again.
The señora Micaela Villegas, artist, kisses the hands of Your Excellency and says that, being the victim of the envious and lying friends that Y.E.’s goodness permits about Him, she can no longer endure Y.E.’s suspicions and jealousy. Y.E.’s servant has always valued Y.E.’s friendship and has never committed nor even thought an offense against it, but she can no longer fight against the calumnies that Y.E. believes so readily. Señora Villegas, artist, called the Perichole, therefore returns herewith such of Y.E.’s gifts as have not been placed beyond recall, since without Y.E.’s confidence Y.E.’s servant can take no pleasure in them.”
Camila continued walking about the room for several minutes, consumed by her thoughts. Presently without so much as glancing at her secretary, she commanded: “Take another leaf.
Have you gone mad? Do not ever think of dedicating another bull to me again. It has caused a frightful war. Heaven protect you, my colt. Friday night, the same place, the same time. I may be a little late, for the fox is wide-awake.
That will be all.”
Manuel rose.
“You swear that you have made no errors?”
“Yes, I swear.”
“There is your money.”
Manuel took the money.
“I shall want you to write me more letters from time to time. My uncle Pio generally writes my letters; these I do not wish him to know about. Good night. Go with God.”
“Go with God.”
Manuel descended the stairs and stood for a long time among the trees, not thinking, not moving.
Esteban knew that his brother was continually brooding over the Perichole, but he never suspected that he saw her. From time to time during the next two months a small boy would approach him in great haste and ask whether he were Manuel or Esteban, and being informed that he was only Esteban, the boy would add that Manuel was wanted at the theatre. Esteban assumed that the call was for copyist’s work and was therefore utterly unprepared for a visit that they received one night in their room.
It was almost midnight. Esteban had gone to bed, and lay gazing out from under the blanket at the candle beside which his brother was working. There was a light tap at the door and Manuel opened to admit a lady heavily veiled, out of breath and nervous. She threw back the scarf from her face and said hurriedly:
“Quick, ink and paper. You are Manuel, yes? You must do a letter for me at once.”
For a moment her glance fell on the two bright eyes that glared at her from the edge of the cot. She murmured: “You … you must excuse me. I know it is late. It was necessary. … I must come.” Then turning to Manuel, she whispered into his ear: “Write this: ‘I, the Perichole, am not accustomed to wait at a rendezvous.’ Have you finished that? ‘You are only a cholo, and there are better matadors than you, even in Lima. I am half Castilian and there are no better actresses in the world. You shall not have the opportunity’—Have you got that?—‘to keep me waiting again, cholo, and I shall laugh the last, for even an actress does not grow old as fast as a bullfighter.’ ”
To Esteban in the shadows the picture of Camila leaning over his brother’s hand and whispering into his ear was complete evidence that a new congeniality had formed such as he would never know. He seemed to shrink away into space, infinitely tiny, infinitely unwanted. He took one more glance at the tableau of Love, all the paradise from which he was shut out, and turned his face to the wall.
Camila seized the note the moment it was done, pushed a coin along the table, and in a last flurry of black lace, scarlet beads and excited whispers left the room. Manuel turned from the door with his candle. He sat down and leaned forward, his hand over his ears, his elbows on his knees. He worshipped her. He murmured to himself over and over again that he worshipped her, making of the sound a sort of incantation and an obstacle to thought.
He emptied his mind of everything but a singsong, and it was this vacancy that permitted him to become aware of Esteban’s mood. He seemed to hear a voice that proceeded from the shadows saying: “Go and follow her, Manuel. Don’t stay here. You’ll be happy. There’s room for us all in the world.” Then the realization became even more intense and he received a mental image of Esteban going a long way off and saying goodbye many times as he went. He was filled with terror; by the light of it he saw that all the other attachments in the world were shadows, or the illusions of fever, even Madre María del Pilar, even the Perichole. He could not understand why Esteban’s misery should present itself as demanding a choice between him and the Perichole, but he could understand Esteban’s misery as misery. And at once he sacrificed everything to it, if it can be said we ever sacrifice anything save what we know we can never attain, or what some secret wisdom tells us it would be uncomfortable or saddening to possess. To be sure, there was nothing on which Esteban could base a complaint. It was not jealousy, for in their earlier affairs it had never occurred to either of them that their loyalty to one another had been diminished. It was merely that in the heart of one of them there was left room for an elaborate imaginative attachment and in the heart of the other there was not. Manuel could not quite understand this and, as we shall see, he nourished a dim sense of being accused unjustly. But he did understand that Esteban was suffering.
