MATER AMPHITRITE
When the Triton occasionally appeared in Valencia,
thrifty Dona Cristina was obliged to modify the dietary
of her family. This man ate nothing but fish,
and her soul of an economical housewife worried greatly
at the thought of the extraordinarily high price that
fish brings in a port of exportation.
Life in that house, where everything always jogged
along so uniformly, was greatly upset by the presence
of the doctor. A little after daybreak, just
when its inhabitants were usually enjoying the dessert
of their night’s sleep, hearing drowsily the
rumble of the early morning carts and the bell-ringing
of the first Masses, the house would reecho to the
rude banging of doors and heavy footsteps making the
stairway creak. It was the Triton rushing
out on the street, incapable of remaining between
four walls after the first streak of light. Following
the currents of the early morning life, he would reach
the market, stopping before the flower stands where
were the most numerous gatherings of women.
The eyes of the women turned toward him instinctively
with an expression of interest and fear. Some
blushed as he passed by, imagining against their will
what an embrace from this hideous and restless Colossus
must be.
“He is capable of crushing a flea on his arm,”
the sailors of his village used to boast when trying
to emphasize the hardness of his biceps. His
body lacked fat, and under his swarthy skin bulged
great, rigid and protruding muscles—an
Herculean texture from which had been eliminated every
element incapable of producing strength. Labarta
found in him a great resemblance to the marine divinities.
He was Neptune before his head had silvered, or Poseidon
as the primitive Greek poets had seen him with hair
black and curly, features tanned by the salt air,
and with a ringleted beard whose two spiral ends seemed
formed by the dripping of the water of the sea.
The nose somewhat flattened by a blow received in
his youth, and the little eyes, oblique and tenacious,
gave to his countenance an expression of Asiatic ferocity,
but this impression melted away when his mouth parted
in a smile, showing his even, glistening teeth, the
teeth of a man of the sea accustomed to live upon
salt food.
During the first few days of his visit he would wander
through the streets wavering and bewildered.
He was afraid of the carriages; the patter of the
passers-by on the pavements annoyed him; he, who had
seen the most important ports of both hemispheres,
complained of the bustle in the capital of a province.
Finally he would instinctively take the road from
the harbor in search of the sea, his eternal friend,
the first to salute him every morning upon opening
the door of his own home down there on the Marina.
On these excursions he would oftentimes be accompanied
by his little nephew. The bustle on the docks,—(the
creaking of the cranes, the dull rumble of the carts,
the deafening cries of the freighters),—always
had for him a certain music reminiscent of his youth
when he was traveling as a doctor on a transatlantic
steamer.
