The Kiss

by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
parts: 1, 2, 3

part 2

The officers looked at one another with an expression halfway between amazement and incredulity. The captain, without waiting to see the effect that his story was having, proceeded in this vein:

“You cannot imagine anything comparable to that nocturnal and fantastic vision emerging from the semi-darkness of the chapel like those virgins painted on stained glass windows that you will have seen stand out in the distance, white and luminous, against the dark backdrop of a cathedral. Her oval face evinced the traces of a slight and spiritual emaciation. Her harmonious features were full of a sweet and melancholy mildness. Her intense pallor, the pure delineation of her slim body, her demure and noble posture, her white and floating garments put me in mind of those women I dreamed of when I was little more than a boy. Chaste and celestial images, the chimerical object of vague and adolescent love!

“I thought myself the plaything of a passing adulation and, without taking my eyes off her for a second and even not daring to breathe, I feared that a breath would dispel the enchantment. She remained quite still. I fancied, on seeing her so diaphanous and luminous, that she was not a creature of this earth but a spirit who, taking on for a moment human form, had descended in a moonbeam, leaving in the air behind her the bluish wake which came down vertically from the high mullioned window to the bottom of the wall opposite, breaking the dark shadow of that gloomy and mysterious precinct.”

“But” — interrupting him his former classmate exclaimed, who, having started by dismissing this tale as a joke had ended up by being interested to hear it out — “how did that woman come to be there? Didn’t you say anything to her? Didn’t she explain to you her presence in that place?”

“I decided not to speak to her because I was sure she wouldn’t answer me, or see me, or hear me.”

“Was she deaf?”

“Was she blind?”

“Was she mute?” exclaimed three or four of those who were listening to this, one after the other.

“She was all those things,” said the captain finally after a moment’s pause. “She was made of marble.”

On hearing the stupendous dénouement to such a peculiar adventure, all in the circle erupted in noisy laughter while one of them remarked to the narrator of this strange story, the only one there to stay calm and serious:

“Let’s get this over with! I have more than a thousand women of that type, quite a seraglio in fact in San Juan de los Reyes, a seraglio which, henceforth, I shall place at your disposal as it appears that women of flesh and women of stone are all the same to you.”

“Oh no!” the captain went on, without being troubled in the least by the belly laughs of his companions. “I am sure that they cannot be like mine. Mine is a true Castilian lady who, due to a sculptor’s miracle, it seems they haven’t buried in a sepulchre, who has stayed alive, both in body and in soul, kneeling on the gravestone that covers her, quite still, with her hands joined together in a suppliant gesture, immersed in an ecstasy of mystical love.”

“The way you tell this, you’ll end up by proving the verisimilitude of the Pygmalion and Galatea legend to us.”

“As far as I’m concerned, I might as well say that I always thought it lunacy, but, since last night, I’m beginning to understand that Greek sculptor’s passion.”

“Given the special circumstances surrounding your new girlfriend, I don’t think you’ll find it hard to introduce us to her. Speaking for myself, I know that I won’t rest until I see this marvel. But.. what the devil’s come over you? One would say that you’re dodging the issue. A fine thing it would be for us to find that you’re jealous already of potential rivals.”

“Jealous?” the captain hastened to say, “not jealous of other men... no... but see, nonetheless, to what heights my folly reaches. Next to the statue of this woman, also made of marble, there is a warrior... her husband no doubt... Well, I’ll get it off my chest even if you do poke fun at my foolishness. If I wasn’t afraid of being taken for a madman, I think I’d have smashed him to pieces a hundred times over.”

A new and even noisier gale of laughter from the officers greeted this fresh revelation from the outlandish lover of the marble lady.

“Never mind that. We need to see her,” said some of those there.

“Yes. We need to know if the object is on a par with such an elevated passion,” others added.

“When can we get together to knock a few back in this church you’ve been allocated to?” cried the rest.

“Whenever seems best to you. Tonight, if you want,” the young captain answered, recovering his habitual smile, eclipsed for a moment by that outburst of jealousy. “While we’re on the subject, in the baggage train I’ve brought along with me a few dozen bottles of Veuve Clicquot, real champagne, what’s left of a present given by the widow herself to our brigade general who, as you know, is a relative of mine.”

“Bravo! Bravo!” the officers exclaimed with one voice, joyfully applauding.

“We’ll drink French champagne!”

“We’ll regale ourselves with love poems by Ronsard!”

“And we’ll talk à propos of the woman of our host!”

“And so... until tonight!”

“Until tonight.”

The law-abiding citizens of Toledo had already long ago locked and bolted the heavy doors of their ancient dwellings. The fat cathedral bell was ringing to announce the curfew and atop the palace-fortress, now converted into barracks; bugles were sounding the call to quarters when ten or twelve officers, who had been gradually assembling in Zocodover Square, now took the road that led from this point to the monastery allocated to the captain, motivated more by the hope of emptying the promised bottles than by the desire to acquaint themselves with the marvellous sculpture.

The night had closed in dark and menacing. The sky was covered by clouds the colour of lead. The wind, humming trapped in the narrow and twisting streets, made the dying light of candles before altarpieces flicker, or caused the iron weather vanes on top of towers to gyrate with a high-pitched squeaking noise.

Hardly had the officers caught sight of the square in which the lodging of their new friend was situated than he, who was awaiting their arrival with impatience, came out to meet them and, after exchanging a few words in a subdued tone of voice, all went together into the church, in the gloomy interior of which the scant light of a lantern struggled laboriously with the darkest and densest of shadows.

“Good God!” exclaimed one of the guests, looking about him, “This is the last place you’d choose to have a party.”

“Indeed,” affirmed another, “you’ve brought us here to see a woman and it’s only with a great deal of difficulty that we can see the fingers of our hands.”

“And, to cap it all, it’s cold enough in here to make us think we’re in Siberia,” added a third, cocooning himself in his cape.

“Calm down, gentlemen, calm down,” the host butted in. “Calm down, for all will be provided for. Right, lads,” he went on, going towards one of his adjutants, “fetch some firewood in and light for us a good fire in the main chapel.”

The adjutant, obeying the orders of his captain, started to break up the wood in the choir stalls and, after having gathered plenty of kindling from the pile on the steps to the presbytery, he took the lantern and set about making an auto-da-fé with these fragments, painstakingly carved, among which here a part of a Solomonic column and there the carving of a saintly abbot, a female torso and the misshapen head of a griffin appeared among dead leaves.

Within a few minutes a great light, which suddenly spilled over everything, and all around the church, told the officers the party was about to begin.

The captain, who had shown off his lodging with the same ceremony he would have used to show off his house, now cried, turning towards the guests: “Please proceed to the buffet.”

His comrades, affecting deep seriousness, responded to the invitation with comical alacrity, filing into the main body of the church preceded by the hero of the feast, who, on reaching the steps, stopped for a moment and, stretching out his hand towards the place where the tomb was located, said to them with the most exquisite self-restraint: “I now have the pleasure to present to you the lady of my dreams. I think you’ll agree that I have not exaggerated her beauty.”

Proceed to part 3...