Tristana by Benito Pérez Galdós Read Free Book Online Page A

bothered to get dressed up; on his head he wore a slightly crumpled beret and, loosely grasped in his right hand, he carried a very worn summer overcoat. He appeared to give little importance to clothes. His suit was gray, his cravat a carelessly tied bow. All this she took in at a glance, and she found this gentleman, or whatever he was, very attractive; he was dark-complexioned and had a short beard . . . For a moment, she wondered if he was wearing glasses, but no, nothing covered his eyes, which were . . . but because he was now some distance away, Tristana couldn’t quite tell what his eyes were like.
    He vanished, but his image lingered in the mind of Don Lope’s slave, and the following day, when she was out walking with Saturna, she saw him again. He was wearing the same suit, but this time he had his coat on and a white scarf around his neck, because there was a cool breeze blowing. She regarded him with a kind of brazen innocence, delighted to see him again, and he returned her gaze, stopping a discreet distance away. “It’s as if he wanted to speak to me,” she thought. “But why doesn’t he just say what he has to say.” Saturna was laughing at this timid exchange of glances, and Tristana, blushing, pretended to laugh too. That night, she could not rest and, not daring to reveal her feelings to Saturna, she had these very grave thoughts: “I really like him! I wish he would get up the courage to speak. I don’t know who he is and yet I think about him night and day. What is going on? Am I mad? Is this just the despair of the prisoner who has discovered a tiny hole through which she can escape? I don’t know what all this means, I only know that I need him to speak to me, even if only by signs, like the deaf-mute children, or for him to write to me. It doesn’t frighten me the idea of writing to him first or saying ‘Yes’ before he has even asked me . . . What madness! But I wonder who he is. He might be a rogue, a . . . No, he’s clearly not like other people. He’s the only one, that much is clear. There is no one else. And fancy meeting the ‘only one’ and finding that he’s even more afraid than I am of telling me that I’m his ‘only one’! No, I’ll speak to him, I’ll go over and ask him the time or something, or I’ll be like the hospice boys and beg a match off him. What nonsense! What would he think of me? He’d think I was a flibbertigibbet. No, he has to be the one to approach me.”
    The following evening, when it was almost dark, when mistress and servant were traveling on the open-top tram, there he was again! They saw him get on at the Glorieta de Quevedo, but because the tram was quite crowded, he had to stand on the platform at the front. Tristana felt so breathless that she occasionally had to stand up in order to breathe more easily. She felt a terrible weight pressing on her lungs, and the idea that, when she got off the tram, the stranger might decide to break his silence filled her with confusion and trepidation. What would she say to him? She would have no alternative but to pretend to be shocked, alarmed, and offended, to reject him outright and tell him “No.” That would be the polite, decent thing to do. They got off, and the gentleman followed them at a chaste distance. Don Lope’s slave didn’t dare to look back, but Saturna took it upon herself to do so for them both. They kept stopping for the most obscure reasons, retracing their steps to look in a shopwindow, but the gentleman remained as silent as a Trappist monk. In their disorderly wanderings, the two women bumped into some boys playing on the pavement, and one of them fell to the ground, screaming, while the others raced for their houses, making a devil of a racket. There was general confusion, a childish tumult, angry mothers rushing to their front doors . . . So many helpful hands reached out to pick up the fallen boy that another fell over too, and the noise only grew.
    While all