Carmen - Prosper Mérimée (bill gates books to read .txt) 📗
- Author: Prosper Mérimée
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“‘My boy,’ said Carmen to me, ‘you’ll have to do something. Now that the king won’t give you either rice or haddock* you’ll have to think of earning your livelihood. You’re too stupid for stealing a pastesas.** But you are brave and active. If you have the pluck, take yourself off to the coast and turn smuggler. Haven’t I promised to get you hanged? That’s better than being shot, and besides, if you set about it properly, you’ll live like a prince as long as the minons*** and the coast-guard don’t lay their hands on your collar.’
** Ustilar a pastesas, to steal cleverly, to purloin
without violence.
*** A sort of volunteer corps.
“In this attractive guise did this fiend of a girl describe the new career she was suggesting to me,—the only one, indeed, remaining, now I had incurred the penalty of death. Shall I confess it, sir? She persuaded me without much difficulty. This wild and dangerous life, it seemed to me, would bind her and me more closely together. In future, I thought, I should be able to make sure of her love.
“I had often heard talk of certain smugglers who travelled about Andalusia, each riding a good horse, with his mistress behind him and his blunderbuss in his fist. Already I saw myself trotting up and down the world, with a pretty gipsy behind me. When I mentioned that notion to her, she laughed till she had to hold her sides, and vowed there was nothing in the world so delightful as a night spent camping in the open air, when each rom retired with his romi beneath their little tent, made of three hoops with a blanket thrown across them.
“‘If I take to the mountains,’ said I to her, ‘I shall be sure of you. There’ll be no lieutenant there to go shares with me.’
“‘Ha! ha! you’re jealous!’ she retorted, ‘so much the worse for you. How can you be such a fool as that? Don’t you see I must love you, because I have never asked you for money?’
“When she said that sort to thing I could have strangled her.
“To shorten the story, sir, Carmen procured me civilian clothes, disguised in which I got out of Seville without being recognised. I went to Jerez, with a letter from Pastia to a dealer in anisette whose house was the smugglers’ meeting-place. I was introduced to them, and their leader, surnamed El Dancaire, enrolled me in his gang. We started for Gaucin, where I found Carmen, who had told me she would meet me there. In all these expeditions she acted as spy for our gang, and she was the best that ever was seen. She had now just returned from Gibraltar, and had already arranged with the captain of a ship for a cargo of English goods which we were to receive on the coast. We went to meet it near Estepona. We hid part in the mountains, and laden with the rest, we proceeded to Ronda. Carmen had gone there before us. It was she again who warned us when we had better enter the town. This first journey, and several subsequent ones, turned out well. I found the smuggler’s life pleasanter than a soldier’s: I could give presents to Carmen, I had money, and I had a mistress. I felt little or no remorse, for, as the gipsies say, ‘The happy man never longs to scratch his itch.’ We were made welcome everywhere, my comrades treated me well, and even showed me a certain respect. The reason of this was that I had killed my man, and that some of them had no exploit of that description on their conscience. But what I valued most in my new life was that I often saw Carmen. She showed me more affection than ever; nevertheless, she would never admit, before my comrades, that she was my mistress, and she had even made me swear all sorts of oaths that I would not say anything about her to them. I was so weak in that creature’s hands, that I obeyed all her whims. And besides, this was the first time she had revealed herself as possessing any of the reserve of a well-conducted woman, and I was simple enough to believe she had really cast off her former habits.
“Our gang, which consisted of eight or ten men, was hardly ever together except at decisive moments, and we were usually scattered by twos and threes about the towns and villages. Each one of us pretended to have some trade. One was a tinker, another was a groom; I was supposed to peddle haberdashery, but I hardly ever showed myself in large places, on account of my unlucky business at Seville. One day, or rather one night, we were to meet below Veger. El Dancaire and I got there before the others.
“‘We shall soon have a new comrade,’ said he. ‘Carmen has just managed one of her best tricks. She has contrived the escape of her rom, who was in the presidio at Tarifa.’
“I was already beginning to understand the gipsy language, which nearly all my comrades spoke, and this word rom startled me.
“What! her husband? Is she married, then?’ said I to the captain.
“‘Yes!’ he replied, ‘married to Garcia el Tuerto*—as cunning a gipsy as she is herself. The poor fellow has been at the galleys. Carmen has wheedled the surgeon of the presidio to such good purpose that she has managed to get her rom out of prison. Faith! that girl’s worth her weight in gold. For two years she has been trying to contrive his escape, but she could do nothing until the authorities took it into their heads to change the surgeon. She soon managed to come to an understanding with this new one.’
“You may imagine how pleasant this news was for me. I soon saw Garcia el Tuerto. He was the very ugliest brute that was ever nursed in gipsydom. His skin was black, his soul was blacker, and he was altogether the most thorough-paced ruffian I ever came across in my life. Carmen arrived with him, and when she called him her rom in my presence, you should have seen the eyes she made at me, and the faces she pulled whenever Garcia turned his head away.
“I was disgusted, and never spoke a word to her all night. The next morning we had made up our packs, and had already started, when we became aware that we had a dozen horsemen on our heels. The braggart Andalusians, who had been boasting they would murder every one who came near them, cut a pitiful figure at once. There was a general rout. El Dancaire, Garcia, a good-looking fellow from Ecija, who was called El Remendado, and Carmen herself, kept their wits about them. The rest forsook the mules and took to the gorges, where the horses could not follow them. There was no hope of saving the mules, so we hastily unstrapped the best part of our booty, and taking it on our shoulders, we tried to escape through the rocks down the steepest of the slopes. We threw our packs down in front of us and followed them as best we could, slipping along on our heels. Meanwhile the enemy fired at us. It was the first time I had ever heard bullets whistling around me and I didn’t mind it very much. When there’s a woman looking on, there’s no particular merit in snapping one’s fingers at death. We all escaped except the poor Remendado, who received a bullet wound in the loins. I threw away my pack and tried to lift him up.
“‘Idiot!’ shouted Garcia, ‘what do we want with offal! Finish him off, and don’t lose the cotton stockings!’
“‘Drop him!’ cried Carmen.
“I was so exhausted that I was obliged to lay him down for a moment under a rock. Garcia came up, and fired his blunderbuss full into his face. ‘He’d be a clever fellow who recognised him now!’ said he, as he looked at the face, cut to pieces by a dozen slugs.
“There, sir; that’s the delightful sort of life I’ve led! That night we found ourselves in a thicket, worn out with fatigue, with nothing to eat, and ruined by the loss of our mules. What do you think that devil Garcia did? He pulled a pack of cards out of his pocket and began playing games with El Dancaire by the light of a fire they kindled. Meanwhile I was lying down, staring at the stars, thinking of El Remendado, and telling myself I would just as lief be in his place. Carmen was squatting down near me, and every now and then she would rattle her castanets and hum a tune. Then, drawing close to me, as if she would have whispered in my ear, she kissed me two or three times over almost against my will.
“‘You are a devil,’ said I to her.
“‘Yes,’ she replied.
“After a few hours’ rest, she departed to Gaucin, and the next morning a little goatherd brought us some food. We stayed there all that day, and in the evening we moved close to Gaucin. We were expecting news from Carmen, but none came. After daylight broke we saw a muleteer attending a well-dressed woman with a parasol, and a little girl who seemed to be her servant. Said Garcia, ‘There go two mules and two women whom St. Nicholas has sent us. I would rather have had four mules, but no matter. I’ll do the best I can with these.’
“He took his blunderbuss, and went down the pathway, hiding himself among the brushwood.
“We followed him, El Dancaire and I keeping a little way behind. As soon as the woman saw us, instead of being frightened—and our dress would have been enough to frighten any one—she burst into a fit of loud laughter. ‘Ah! the lillipendi! They take me for an erani!’ *
“It was Carmen, but so well disguised that if she had spoken any other language I should never have recognised her. She sprang off her mule, and talked some time in an undertone with El Dancaire and Garcia. Then she said to me:
“‘Canary-bird, we shall meet again before you’re hanged. I’m off to Gibraltar on gipsy business—you’ll soon have news of me.’
“We parted, after she had told us of a place where we should find shelter for some days. That girl was the providence of our gang. We soon received some money sent by her, and a piece of news which was still more useful to us—to the effect that on a certain day two English lords would travel from Gibraltar to Granada by a road she mentioned. This was a word to the wise. They had plenty of good guineas. Garcia would have killed them, but El Dancaire and I objected. All we took from them, besides their shirts, which we greatly needed, was their money and their watches.
“Sir, a man may turn rogue in sheer thoughtlessness. You lose your head over a
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