serious, but not deadly serious, as they had given me to believe.
Observing him bent over his sewing, I recalled the speech Mona had once made about him. Particularly those words he had spoken so quietly: “I will kill you one day.”
He was indeed a man capable of doing such a thing. Strangely enough, my feeling was that anything Ricardo might decide to do would be entirely justifiable. To kill, in his case, could not be called a crime; it would be an act of justice. The man was incapable of doing an impure thing. He was a man of heart, all heart, indeed.
At intervals he sipped the tea which they had poured for him. Had it been firewater he would have sipped it in the same calm, tranquil way, I thought. It was a ritual he was observing. Even his way of talking gave the impression of being part of a ritual.
In Spain he had been a musician and a poet; in Cuba he had become a cobbler. Here he was nobody. However, to be a nobody suited him perfectly. He was nobody and everybody. Nothing to prove, nothing to achieve. Fully accomplished, like a rock.
Homely as sin he was, but from every pore of his being there radiated only kindness, mercy and forbearance. And this was the man to whom they imagined they were doing a great favor! How little they suspected the man’s keen understanding! Impossible for them to believe that, knowing all, he could still give nothing but affection. Or, that he expected nothing more of Mona than the privilege of further inflaming his mad passion.
“One day,” he says quietly, “I will marry you. Then all this will be like a dream.”
Slowly he raises his eyes, first to Mona, then to Stasia, then to me. As if to say—“You have heard me.”
“What a lucky man,” he says, fixing me with his steady, kindly gaze. “What a lucky man you are to enjoy the friendship of these two. I have not yet been admitted to the inner circle.”
Then, veering to Mona, he says: “You will soon tire of being forever mysterious. It is like standing before the mirror all day. I see you from behind the mirror. The mystery is not in what you do but in what you are. When I take you out of this morbid life you will be naked as a statue. Now your beauty is all furniture. It has been moved around too much. We must put it back where it belongs—on the rubbish pile. Once upon a time I thought that everything had to be expressed poetically, or musically. I did not realize that there was a place, and a reason, for ugly things. For me the worst was vulgarity. But vulgarity can be honest, even pleasing, as I discovered. We do not need to raise everything to the level of the stars. Everything has its foundation of clay. Even Helen of Troy. No one, not even the most beautiful of women, should hide behind her own beauty. . . .”
While speaking thus, in his quiet, even way, he continued with his mending. Here is the true sage, I thought to myself. Male and female equally divided; passionate, yet calm and patient; detached, yet giving fully of himself; seeing clearly into the very soul of his beloved, steadfast, devoted, almost idolatrous, yet aware of even her slightest defects. A truly gentle soul, as Dostoevski would say.
And they had thought I would enjoy meeting this individual because I had a weakness for fools!
Instead of talking to him they plied him with questions, silly questions which were intended to reveal the absurd innocence of his nature. To all their queries he replied in the same vein. He answered them as if he were replying to the senseless remarks of children. While thoroughly aware of their abysmal indifference to his explanations, which he purposely drew out, he spoke as the wise man so often does when dealing with a child: he planted in their minds the seeds which later would sprout and, in sprouting, would remind them of their cruelty, their willful ignorance, and the healing quality of truth.
In effect they were not quite as callous as their conduct might have led one to believe. They were drawn to him, one might even say they loved him, in a way which to them was unique. No one else they knew could have elicited such sincere affection, such deep regard. They did not ridicule this love if such it was. They were baffled by it. It was the sort of love which usually only an animal is capable of evoking. For only animals, it would seem, are capable of manifesting that total acceptance of humankind which brings about a surrender of the whole being—an unquestioning surrender, moreover, such as is seldom rendered by one human to another.
To me it was more than strange than such a scene should occur around a table where so much talk of love was constantly bandied. It was because of these continual eruptions indeed that we had come to refer to it as the gut table. In what other dwelling, I often wondered, could there be this incessant disturbance, this inferno of emotion, this devastating talk of love resolved always on a note of discord? Only now, in Ricardo’s presence, did the reality of love show forth. Curiously enough, the word was scarcely mentioned. But it was love, nothing else, that shone through all his gestures, poured through all his utterances.
Love, I say. It might also have been God.
This same Ricardo, I had been given to understand, was a confirmed atheist. They might as well have said—a confirmed criminal. Perhaps the greatest lovers of God and of man have been confirmed atheists, confirmed criminals. The lunatics of love, so to say.
What one took him to be mattered not at all to Ricardo. He could give the illusion of being whatever one desired him to be. Yet he was forever himself.
If I am never to meet him again, thought I, neither shall I ever forget him. Though it may be given us only once in a lifetime to come into the presence of a complete and thoroughly genuine being, it is enough. More than enough. It was not difficult to understand why a Christ or a Buddha could, by a single word, a glance, or a gesture, profoundly affect the nature and the destiny of the twisted souls who moved within their spheres. I could also understand why some should remain impervious.
In the midst of these reflections it occurred to me that perhaps I had played a similar role, though in a far lesser degree, in those unforgettable days when, begging for an ounce of understanding, a sign of forgiveness, a touch of grace, there poured into my office a steady stream of hapless men, women and youngsters of all descriptions. From where I sat, as employment manager, I must have appeared to them either as a beneficent deity or a stern judge, perhaps even an executioner. I had power not only over their own lives but over their loved ones. Power over their very souls, it seemed. Seeking me out after hours, as they did, they often gave me the impression of convicts sneaking into the confessional through the rear door of the church. Little did they know that in begging for mercy they disarmed me, robbed me of my power and authority. It was not I who aided them at such moments, it was they who aided me. They humbled me, made me compassionate, taught me how to give of myself.
How often, after a heartrending scene, I felt obliged to walk over the Bridge—to collect myself. How unnerving, how shattering it was, to be regarded as an all-powerful being! How ironic and absurd too that, in the performance of my routine duties, I should be obliged to play the role of a little Christ! Halfway across the span I would stop and lean over the rail. The sight of the dark, oily waters below comforted me. Into the rushing stream I emptied my turbulent thoughts and emotions.
Still more soothing and fascinating to my spirit were the colored reflections which danced over the surface of the waters below. They danced like festive lanterns swaying in the wind; they mocked my somber thoughts and illuminated the deep chasms of misery which yawned within me. Suspended high above the river’s flow, I had the feeling of being detached from all problems, relieved of all cares and responsibilities. Never once did the river stop to ponder or question, never once did it seek to alter its course. Always onward, onward, full and steady. Looking back toward the shore, how like toy blocks appeared the skyscrapers which overshadowed the river’s bank! How ephemeral, how puny, how vain and arrogant! Into these grandiose tombs men and women muscled their way day in and day out, killing their souls to earn their bread, selling themselves,
