The Kiss

by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
parts: 1, 2, 3

conclusion

The officers turned their eyes to the point their friend was indicating and an exclamation of astonishment instinctively escaped from every mouth.

At the end of a funerary archway, adorned with black marble figures, kneeling at a prie-dieu, her hands joined in prayer and her face towards the altar, they saw, in effect, the image of a woman so beautiful that her equal had never since been fashioned by the hand of a sculptor. Not even the desire of man’s imagination could have rendered her more lovely.

“She’s an angel, it’s true!” one of the company proclaimed.

“What a pity that she’s made of marble!” another added.

“There’s no doubt that, even though it generates no more than the illusion of being with one of the quality, it’s enough to render you incapable of closing your eyes all night.”

“And you don’t know who she is?” some of those contemplating the statue asked the captain, who was smiling, well pleased with his triumph.

“Remembering a bit of the Latin I learned when I was a boy, I’ve managed, not without considerable difficulty, to decipher the inscription on this tomb,” the captain answered. “From what I’ve been able to piece together, she was the wife of a Castilian nobleman, a famous warrior who campaigned with the Great Captain. I’ve forgotten his name, but his spouse, the woman you’re looking at, was called Lady Elvira de Castañeda and, by my faith, if the copy is anything like the original, she must have been the most notable woman of her century.”

After this short explanation the guests, who had not lost sight of the principal reason for their reunion, proceeded to uncork some of the bottles and, while they sat around the fire, the champagne started to do the rounds.

As the libations became more frequent and the bubbling champagne began to go to heads, the uproar increased. Young officers were hurling the corks from empty bottles at statues of monks in granite and singing scandalous drinking songs at the top of their voices, while others burst out laughing, clapped their hands or blasphemously argued with each other.

The captain drank in silence like somebody desperate and without once taking his eyes off the statue of Lady Elvira.

Illuminated by the ruddy glow of the bonfire, through the wavering veil that drunkenness had started to impede his sight with, it seemed to him the marble image was occasionally being transformed into a real woman. It seemed to him she half-opened her lips to mumble a prayer, that her breast rose and fell as if she were oppressed or inwardly sobbing, that she clasped her hands more forcefully, that her cheeks coloured up as if she were blushing at that sacrilegious and repulsive spectacle.

The officers, who had noticed the taciturn sadness of their comrade, roused him from the trance into which he had sunk and, presenting him with a cup, chorused: “Come on. Drink a toast. You’re the only one who hasn’t all night!”

The young man took the cup, stood up and, raising it, standing face to face with the statue of the warrior knelt down next to Lady Elvira, said: “I drink to the Emperor and his conquering army, thanks to which we’ve been able to come to Castille to court here the wife of a victor on the battlefield of Cerignola, now buried next to her!”

The soldiers greeted this toast with a salvo of applause and the captain staggered a few steps towards the tomb: “No,” he resumed, coming ever closer to the statue of the warrior and wearing on his face the stupid smile that drunkenness brings, “don’t think I bear you a grudge because I see in you a rival. On the contrary, I admire you as a patient husband, exemplary in longanimity and meekness, and I, in turn, also want to be generous. You’ll drink with me like a soldier. Let it not be said I let you die of thirst after seeing us drink twenty bottles of champagne. Take this! It’s for you!”

So saying, he lifted the cup to the statue’s lips and, having moistened them with its contents, threw the rest in his face, breaking into noisy laughter when he saw how the wine went dripping down the stone beard of the stationary warrior onto the tomb.

“Captain!” exclaimed at this point one of his comrades in a jocular tone of voice. “Watch what you’re doing. Playing these pranks on statuary can cost you dear. Bear in mind what happened to the 5th regiment of hussars in the monastery of Poblet. They say there that the statues in the cloister drew their granite swords one night and gave what for to soldiers amusing themselves by drawing moustaches on them with charcoal.”

The young officers split their sides laughing at this novel occurrence, but the captain, paying no attention to their laughter, continued to focus on the same obsession: “Do you think I’d have given him the wine without knowing he’d at least swallow what fell into his mouth? No! I don’t believe, as you do, that these statues are just lumps of marble as inert today as they were on the day they were taken from the quarry. Undoubtedly the sculptor, who is almost like God, gives a breath of life to his work, which stops short of making it move but which imparts to it a life that is strange and impalpable. I can’t express this life in words but I feel it, especially when I’ve been drinking.”

“Magnificent!” cried his comrades. “Drink and go on with what you were saying.”

The officer drank and, gazing at Lady Elvira, continued, more and more exaltedly: “Look at her! Look at her! Can you not see the red streaks in her soft, translucent flesh? Can you not see that under that smooth and light blue alabaster skin there circulates a blood the colour of red roses? Do you want her to be more alive? Do you want her to be more real?”

“Yes, most certainly,” said one of those who were listening. “We’d like to see her in the flesh.”

“Flesh and bones? Wretchedness, rottenness!” cried the captain. “I have felt in an orgy my lips and my head burning, I have felt that fire that boils through the veins like the lava from a volcano, the caliginous vapours of which disturb the brain and make one see strange visions. To receive a kiss then from those women of flesh burned me like a red-hot iron, and I pushed them away from me with distaste, with horror, even with loathing because then, as now, I needed a breath from a sea breeze to cool my heated mind, to drink ice and to kiss snow, snow stained with gentle light, snow coloured by a golden ray of sunshine, a lovely, white and cold woman like this woman of stone who seems to entice me with her fantastic beauty, who seems to flicker like a flame, and who provokes me, half-opening her lips and offering to me love’s treasure. Only to kiss her will moderate the ardour that consumes me.”

“Captain!” cried some of the officers on seeing him go towards the statue as if beside himself, his eyes unfocused and his feet unsure. “What madness are you about to enact? This joke’s gone far enough! Leave the dead in peace!”

The young captain did not even hear the words of his friends and, tottering forward as best he could, he came to the tomb and approached the statue but, when he held his arms out to her, a shout of horror went up in the church. Blood came oozing from his eyes, nose and mouth and he collapsed, disfigured, at the foot of the funerary monument.

The other officers, dumbstruck and frightened, dared not take a single step to help him.

Just as their comrade had sought to press his burning lips to those of Lady Elvira, they had seen the motionless warrior raise his hand and knock the captain down with a fearsome blow from his mailed fist.

Proceed to Challenge 1006...