The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

V >> Vicente Blasco Ibanez >> The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse


The mere sight of them filled Don Marcelo with a kind of savage joy, as
his mourning fatherhood tasted the fleeting consolation of vengeance.
Julio had died, and he was going to die, too, not having strength to
survive his bitter woe; but how many hundreds of the enemy wasting in
these awful trenches were also leaving in the world loved beings who
would remember them as he was remembering his son! . . .

He imagined them as they must have been before the death call sounded,
as he had seen them in the advance around his castle.

Some of them, the most prominent and terrifying, probably still showed
on their faces the theatrical cicatrices of their university duels. They
were the soldiers who carried books in their knapsacks, and after the
fusillade of a lot of country folk, or the sacking and burning of a
hamlet, devoted themselves to reading the poets and philosophers by
the glare of the blaze which they had kindled. They were bloated with
science as with the puffiness of a toad, proud of their pedantic and
all-sufficient intellectuality. Sons of sophistry and grandsons of
cant, they had considered themselves capable of proving the greatest
absurdities by the mental capers to which they had accustomed their
acrobatic intellects.

They had employed the favorite method of the thesis, antithesis and
synthesis in order to demonstrate that Germany ought to be the Mistress
of the World; that Belgium was guilty of her own ruin because she had
defended herself; that true happiness consisted in having all humanity
dominated by Prussia; that the supreme idea of existence consisted in
a clean stable and a full manger; that Liberty and Justice were nothing
more than illusions of the romanticism of the French; that every deed
accomplished became virtuous from the moment it triumphed, and that
Right was simply a derivative of Might. These metaphysical athletes with
guns and sabres were accustomed to consider themselves the paladins of
a crusade of civilization. They wished the blond type to triumph
definitely over the brunette; they wished to enslave the worthless man
of the South, consigning him forever to a world regulated by "the salt
of the earth," "the aristocracy of humanity." Everything on the page of
history that had amounted to anything was German. The ancient Greeks had
been of Germanic origin; German, too, the great artists of the Italian
Renaissance. The men of the Mediterranean countries, with the inherent
badness of their extraction, had falsified history. . . .

"That's the best place for you. . . You are better where you are buried,
you pitiless pedants!" thought Desnoyers, recalling his conversations
with his friend, the Russian.

What a shame that there were not here, too, all the Herr Professors of
the German universities--those wise men so unquestionably skilful
in altering the trademarks of intellectual products and changing the
terminology of things! Those men with flowing beards and gold-rimmed
spectacles, pacific rabbits of the laboratory and the professor's
chair that had been preparing the ground for the present war with their
sophistries and their unblushing effrontery! Their guilt was far greater
than that of the Herr Lieutenant of the tight corset and the gleaming
monocle, who in his thirst for strife and slaughter was simply and
logically working out the professional charts.

While the German soldier of the lower classes was plundering what he
could and drunkenly shooting whatever crossed his path, the warrior
student was reading by the camp glow, Hegel and Nietzsche. He was too
enlightened to execute with his own hands these acts of "historical
justice," but he, with the professors, was rousing all the bad
instincts of the Teutonic beast and giving them a varnish of scientific
justification.

"Lie there, in your sepulchre, you intellectual scourge!" continued
Desnoyers mentally.

The fierce Moors, the negroes of infantile intelligence, the sullen
Hindus, appeared to him more deserving of respect than all the
ermine-bordered togas parading haughtily and aggressively through the
cloisters of the German universities. What peacefulness for the world
if their wearers should disappear forever! He preferred the simple
and primitive barbarity of the savage to the refined, deliberate and
merciless barbarity of the greedy sage;--it did less harm and was not so
hypocritical.

For this reason, the only ones in the enemy's ranks who awakened his
commiseration were the lowly and unlettered dead interred beneath the
sod. They had been peasants, factory hands, business clerks, German
gluttons of measureless (intestinal) capacity, who had seen in the war
an opportunity for satisfying their appetites, for beating somebody and
ordering them about after having passed their lives in their country,
obeying and receiving kicks.

The history of their country was nothing more than a series of
raids--like the Indian forays, in order to plunder the property of those
who lived in the mild Mediterranean climes. The Herr Professors
had proved to their countrymen that such sacking incursions were
indispensable to the highest civilization, and that the German was
marching onward with the enthusiasm of a good father sacrificing himself
in order to secure bread for his family.

Hundreds of thousands of letters, written by their relatives with
tremulous hands, were following the great Germanic horde across the
invaded countries. Desnoyers had overheard the reading of some of these,
at nightfall before his ruined castle. These were some of the messages
found in the pockets of the imprisoned or dead:--"Don't show any pity
for the red pantaloons. Kill WHOMEVER YOU CAN, and show no mercy even to
the little ones." . . . "We would thank you for the shoes, but the girl
cannot get them on. Those French have such ridiculously small feet!"
. . . "Try to get hold of a piano.". . . "I would very much like a good
watch." . . . "Our neighbor, the Captain, has sent his wife a necklace
of pearls. . . . And you send only such insignificant things!"

The virtuous German had been advancing heroically with the double desire
of enlarging his country and of making valuable gifts to his offspring.
"Deutschland uber alles!" But their most cherished illusions had fallen
into the burial ditch in company with thousands of comrades-at-arms fed
on the same dreams.

Desnoyers could imagine the impatience on the other side of the Rhine,
the pitiful women who were waiting and waiting. The lists of the dead
had, perhaps, overlooked the missing ones; and the letters kept coming
and coming to the German lines, many of them never reaching their
destination. "Why don't you answer! Perhaps you are not writing so as to
give us a great surprise. Don't forget the necklace! Send us a piano.
A carved china cabinet for the dining room would please us greatly. The
French have so many beautiful things!" . . .

The bare cross rose stark and motionless above the lime-blanched land.
Near it the little flags were fluttering their wings, moving from side
to side like a head shaking out a smiling, ironical protest--No! . . .
No!

The automobile continued on its painful way. The guide was now pointing
to a distant group of graves. That was undoubtedly the place where the
regiment had been fighting. So the vehicle left the main road, sinking
its wheels in the soft earth, having to make wide detours in order to
avoid the mounds scattered about so capriciously by the casualties of
the combat.

Almost all of the fields were ploughed. The work of the farmer extended
from tomb to tomb, making them more prominent as the morning sun forced
its way through the enshrouding mists.

Nature, blind, unfeeling and silent, ignoring individual existence and
taking to her bosom with equal indifference, a poor little animal or a
million corpses, was beginning to smile under the late winter suns.

The fountains were still crusted with their beards of ice; the earth
snapped as the feet weighed down its hidden crystals; the trees, black
and sleeping, were still retaining the coat of metallic green in which
the winter had clothed them; from the depths of the earth still issued
an acute, deadly chill, like that of burned-out planets. . . . But
Spring had already girded herself with flowers in her palace in the
tropics, and was saddling with green her trusty steed, neighing with
impatience. Soon they would race through the fields, driving before them
in disordered flight the black goblins of winter, and leaving in their
wake green growing things and tender, subtle perfumes. The wayside
greenery, robing itself in tiny buds, was already heralding their
arrival. The birds were venturing forth from their retreats in order
to wing their way among the crows croaking wrathfully above the closed
tombs. The landscape was beginning to smile in the sunlight with the
artless, deceptive smile of a child who looks candidly around while his
pockets are stuffed with stolen goodies.

The husbandmen had ploughed the fields and filled the furrows with seed.
Men might go on killing each other as much as they liked; the soil had
no concern with their hatreds, and on that account, did not propose to
alter its course. As every year, the metal cutter had opened its
usual lines, obliterating with its ridges the traces of man and beast,
undismayed and with stubborn diligence filling up the tunnels which the
bombs had made.

Sometimes the ploughshare had struck against an obstacle underground
. . . an unknown, unburied man; but the cultivator had continued on its
way without pity. Every now and then, it was stopped by less yielding
obstructions, projectiles which had sunk into the ground intact. The
rustic had dug up these instruments of death which occasionally had
exploded their delayed charge in his hands.

But the man of the soil knows no fear when in search of sustenance, and
so was doggedly continuing his rectilinear advance, swerving only before
the visible tombs; there the furrows had curved mercifully, making
little islands of the mounds surmounted by crosses and flags. The seeds
of future bread were preparing to extend their tentacles like devil
fish among those who, but a short time before, were animated by such
monstrous ambition. Life was about to renew itself once more.

The automobile came to a standstill. The guide was running about among
the crosses, stooping over in order to examine their weather-stained
inscriptions.

"Here we are!"

He had found above one grave the number of the regiment.

Chichi and her husband promptly dismounted again. Then Dona Luisa, with
sad resolution, biting her lips to keep the tears back. Then the three
devoted themselves to assisting the father who had thrown off his fur
lap-robe. Poor Desnoyers! On touching the ground, he swayed back and
forth, moving forward with the greatest effort, lifting his feet with
difficulty, and sinking his staff in the hollows.

"Lean on me, my poor dear," said the old wife, offering her arm.

The masterful head of the family could no longer take a single step
without their aid.

Then began their slow, painful pilgrimage among the graves.

The guide was still exploring the spot bristling with crosses, spelling
out the names, and hesitating before the faded lettering. Rene was doing
the same on the other side of the road. Chichi went on alone, the wind
whirling her black veil around her, and making the little curls escape
from under her mourning hat every time she leaned over to decipher a
name. Her daintily shod feet sunk deep into the ruts, and she had to
gather her skirts about her in order to move more comfortably--revealing
thus at every step evidences of the joy of living, of hidden beauty,
of consummated love following her course through this land of death and
desolation.

In the distance sounded feebly her father's voice:

"Not yet?"

The two elders were growing impatient, anxious to find their son's
resting place as soon as possible.

A half hour thus dragged by without any result--always unfamiliar names,
anonymous crosses or the numbers of other regiments. Don Marcelo was
no longer able to stand. Their passage across the irregularities of the
soft earth had been torment for him. He was beginning to despair. . . .
Ay, they would never find Julio's remains! The parents, too, had been
scrutinizing the plots nearest them, bending sadly before cross after
cross. They stopped before a long, narrow hillock, and read the name.
. . . No, he was not there, either; and they continued desperately along
the painful path of alternate hopes and disappointments.

It was Chichi who notified them with a cry, "Here. . . . Here it is!"
The old folks tried to run, almost falling at every step. All the family
were soon grouped around a heap of earth in the vague outline of a bier,
and beginning to be covered with herbage. At the head was a cross with
letters cut in deep with the point of a knife, the kind deed of some of
his comrades-at-arms--"DESNOYERS." . . . Then in military abbreviations,
the rank, regiment and company.

A long silence. Dona Luisa had knelt instantly, with her eyes fixed on
the cross--those great, bloodshot eyes that could no longer weep. Till
then, tears had been constantly in her eyes, but now they deserted her
as though overcome by the immensity of a grief incapable of expressing
itself in the usual ways.

The father was staring at the rustic grave in dumb amazement. His son
was there, there forever! . . . and he would never see him again! He
imagined him sleeping unshrouded below, in direct contact with the
earth, just as Death had surprised him in his miserable and heroic old
uniform. He recalled the exquisite care which the lad had always given
his body--the long bath, the massage, the invigorating exercise of
boxing and fencing, the cold shower, the elegant and subtle perfume
. . . all that he might come to this! . . . that he might be interred
just where he had fallen in his tracks, like a wornout beast of burden!

The bereaved father wished to transfer his son immediately from the
official burial fields, but he could not do it yet. As soon as possible
it should be done, and he would erect for him a mausoleum fit for a
king. . . . And what good would that do? He would merely be changing the
location of a mass of bones, but his body, his physical semblance--all
that had contributed to the charm of his personality would be mixed
with the earth. The son of the rich Desnoyers would have become an
inseparable part of a poor field in Champagne. Ah, the pity of it
all! And for this, had he worked so hard and so long to accumulate his
millions? . . .

He could never know how Julio's death had happened. Nobody could tell
him his last words. He was ignorant as to whether his end had been
instantaneous, overwhelming--his idol going out of the world with his
usual gay smile on his lips, or whether he had endured long hours of
agony abandoned in the field, writhing like a reptile or passing through
phases of hellish torment before collapsing in merciful oblivion. He was
also ignorant of just how much was beneath this mound--whether an
entire body discreetly touched by the hand of Death, or an assemblage of
shapeless remnants from the devastating hurricane of steel! . . . And
he would never see him again! And that Julio who had been filling his
thoughts would become simply a memory, a name that would live while
his parents lived, fading away, little by little, after they had
disappeared! . . .

He was startled to hear a moan, a sob. . . . Then he recognized dully
that they were his own, that he had been accompanying his reflections
with groans of grief.

His wife was still at his feet, kneeling, alone with her heartbreak,
fixing her dry eyes on the cross with a gaze of hypnotic tenacity.
. . . There was her son near her knees, lying stretched out as she had
so often watched him when sleeping in his cradle! . . . The father's
sobs were wringing her heart, too, but with an unbearable depression,
without his wrathful exasperation. And she would never see him again!
. . . Could it be possible! . . .

Chichi's presence interrupted the despairing thoughts of her parents.
She had run to the automobile, and was returning with an armful of
flowers. She hung a wreath on the cross and placed a great spray of
blossoms at the foot. Then she scattered a shower of petals over the
entire surface of the grave, sadly, intensely, as though performing
a religious rite, accompanying the offering with her outspoken
thoughts--"For you who so loved life for its beauties and pleasures!
. . . for you who knew so well how to make yourself beloved!" . . . And
as her tears fell, her affectionate memories were as full of admiration
as of grief. Had she not been his sister, she would have liked to have
been his beloved.

And having exhausted the rain of flower-petals, she wandered away so as
not to disturb the lamentations of her parents.

Before the uselessness of his bitter plaints, Don Marcelo's former
dominant character had come to life, raging against destiny.

He looked at the horizon where so often he had imagined the adversary
to be, and clenched his fists in a paroxysm of fury. His disordered mind
believed that it saw the Beast, the Nemesis of humanity. And how much
longer would the evil be allowed to go unpunished? . . .

There was no justice; the world was ruled by blind chance;--all lies,
mere words of consolation in order that mankind might exist unterrified
by the hopeless abandon in which it lived!

It appeared to him that from afar was echoing the gallop of the four
Apocalyptic horsemen, riding rough-shod over all his fellow-creatures.
He saw the strong and brutal giant with the sword of War, the archer
with his repulsive smile, shooting his pestilential arrows, the
bald-headed miser with the scales of Famine, the hard-riding spectre
with the scythe of Death. He recognized them as only divinities,
familiar and terrible-which had made their presence felt by mankind. All
the rest was a dream. The four horsemen were the reality. . . .

Suddenly, by the mysterious process of telepathy, he seemed to read the
thoughts of the one grieving at his feet.

The mother, impelled by her own sorrow, was thinking of that of others.
She, too, was looking toward the distant horizon. There she seemed to
see a procession of the enemy, grieving in the same way as were her
family. She saw Elena with her daughters going in and out among the
burial grounds, seeking a loved one, falling on their knees before a
cross. Ay, this mournful satisfaction, she could never know completely!
It would be forever impossible for her to pass to the opposite side in
search of the other grave, for, even after some time had passed by, she
could never find it. The beloved body of Otto would have disappeared
forever in one of the nameless pits which they had just passed.

"O Lord, why did we ever come to these lands? Why did we not continue
living in the land where we were born?" . . .

Desnoyers, too, uniting his thoughts with hers, was seeing again the
pampas, the immense green plains of the ranch where he had become
acquainted with his wife. Again he could hear the tread of the herds. He
recalled Madariaga on tranquil nights proclaiming, under the splendor of
the stars, the joys of peace, the sacred brotherhood of these people
of most diverse extraction, united by labor, abundance and the lack of
political ambition.

And as his thoughts swung back to the lost son he, too, exclaimed with
his wife, "Oh, why did we ever come? . . ." He, too, with the solidarity
of grief, began to sympathize with those on the other side of the battle
front. They were suffering just as he was; they had lost their sons.
Human grief is the same everywhere.

But then he revolted against his commiseration. Karl had been an
advocate of this war. He was among those who had looked upon war as the
perfect state for mankind, who had prepared it with their provocations.
It was just that War should devour his sons; he ought not to bewail
their loss. . . . But he who had always loved Peace! He who had only one
son, only one! . . . and now he was losing him forever! . . .

He was going to die; he was sure that he was going to die. . . . Only a
few months of life were left in him. And his pitiful, devoted companion
kneeling at his feet, she, too, would soon pass away. She could not long
survive the blow which they had just received. There was nothing further
for them to do; nobody needed them any longer.

Their daughter was thinking only of herself, of founding a separate
home interest--with the hard instinct of independence which separates
children from their parents in order that humanity may continue its work
of renovation.

Julio was the only one who would have prolonged the family, passing
on the name. The Desnoyers had died; his daughter's children would be
Lacour. . . . All was ended.

Don Marcelo even felt a certain satisfaction in thinking of his
approaching death. More than anything else, he wished to pass out of the
world. He no longer had any curiosity as to the end of this war in which
he had been so interested. Whatever the end might be, it would be sure
to turn out badly. Although the Beast might be mutilated, it would again
come forth years afterward, as the eternal curse of mankind. . . . For
him the only important thing now was that the war had robbed him of his
son. All was gloomy, all was black. The world was going to its ruin.
. . . He was going to rest.

Chichi had clambered up on the hillock which contained, perhaps, more
than their dead. With furrowed brow, she was contemplating the plain.
Graves . . . graves everywhere! The recollection of Julio had already
passed to second place in her mind. She could not bring him back, no
matter how much she might weep.

This vision of the fields of death made her think all the more of the
living. As her eyes roved from side to side, she tried, with her hands,
to keep down the whirling of her wind-tossed skirts. Rene was standing
at the foot of the knoll, and several times after a sweeping glance at
the numberless mounds around them, she looked thoughtfully at him, as
though trying to establish a relationship between her husband and those
below. And he had exposed his life in combats just as these men had
done! . . .

"And you, my poor darling," she continued aloud. "At this very moment
you, too, might be lying here under a heap of earth with a wooden cross
at your head, just like these poor unfortunates!"

The sub-lieutenant smiled sadly. Yes, it was so.

"Come here; climb up here!" said Chichi impetuously. "I want to give you
something!"

As soon as he approached her, she flung her arms around his neck,
pressed him against the warm softness of her breast, exhaling a perfume
of life and love, and kissed him passionately without a thought of her
brother, without seeing her aged parents grieving below them and longing
to die. . . . And her skirts, freed by the breeze, molded her figure in
the superb sweep of the curves of a Grecian vase.