Don Juan drank another cup. His face flushed. “I do not know what I seek in her, my friend. Love is only a method to vanquish boredom…”
“Our lives are so short, Don Juan! Have we time to be bored?”
Kotikokura grinned.
“The gods have mocked us with an unspeakable mockery, señor,” Don Juan replied, “by making the temple of Eros an accessory of the cloaca. Only drink and the caress of a thousand women can make us forget the disgust and the indignity.”
“Should not a great lover, Don Juan, overcome this fastidiousness—defeat the gods and their mockery, and discover beauty precisely where they had meant to create ugliness?”
He knit his brows and looked at me intently. “What man can do that?”
“I have done it, Don Juan.”
He smiled a little bitterly, a little ironically. “Señor, if you have done that, then you are the Supreme Lover of all time—and not Don Juan!”
I smiled. ‘How often we speak the truth unwittingly.’ I thought. Was I more fortunate than Don Juan merely because I lived longer? Had Nature afforded me such an abundance of life, such torrents of vitality, that all the dikes of ugliness were swept away, and the fresh waters of beauty flooded my being?
“Perhaps,” I said, “if our lives were stretched out for centuries, Don Juan, we might discover the secret of outwitting the irony of the gods.”
“What an incalculable boredom would overwhelm us then, señor! We might have to possess a million women—and still remain unassuaged.”
A servant whispered into Don Juan’s ear that the seconds had arrived.
The seconds brought word that any attempt to effect a reconciliation would be futile. Fernando refused to apologize. After they were gone, Don Juan waved his fist. “The idiot! The idiot! He wants to die! He has seen me engaged in many duels. I never received a scar, señor,—never! He has never fought except in play. He was always so gentle and amenable—more delicate than his sister! What mania women have for confessing! Had she kept still about it, her brother would not be dead tomorrow! Ah, let us drink, señor… The world’s a cackling hen.”
We drank one another’s health. With every additional cup, Don Juan became more melancholy. I had long ago observed that drink brings forth our true personality which, like a too passionate virgin, is locked within the castle of our beings. Drink is a daring Knight Errant who climbs the tall wall and descends a rope, carrying in his arms our secret.
Don Juan was a gentle lamb, bleating sadly—not a roaring lion of love.
Don Juan sighed. “I do not know why I tell you all this, señor,” he said. “It is but the second day I have seen you. Never before have I spoken so freely– —”
“I appreciate your confidence, señor.”
The servant whispered something into Don Juan’s ear.
“No, no—not today.”
The servant seemed reluctant to go.
“Not today,” Don Juan shouted. “To the devil with her!”
The servant left.
“The amiable Countess expects me.”
He laughed suddenly. “I poisoned two dogs, bribed a half dozen servants, and nearly broke my neck climbing into her room. Besides, her husband is a favorite of the King. I jeopardized my head to go with her through the absurd motions of conjugation. Why did I risk so much? Señor, she has a beauty spot on her left breast… A tiny spot the size of a pinhead. It is really a blemish, an imperfection of the skin,—yet it promised so much!… I assure you, señor, she was not one bit different from all the others. I should have known!… She was my nine hundred and ninety-seventh.”
“Pardon me, Don Juan, but is it really possible to keep an exact record of every amour?”
He laughed. “I have an album, señor, in which I put the initials and the number of each woman with a few remarks, generally of a depreciating nature—too fat, too thin, too white, too dark, too insistent, too cold, bored me at the critical moment, reminded me of a parrot, a dog, a cat. Also the difficulties encountered—the duels fought, the husbands duped, etc., etc.”
“A strange document which will be of value to posterity,” I remarked.
Don Juan smiled, pleased.
“Many a poet will compose sonnets to the world’s master lover…”
“But señor,—I have never loved.”
“What!” I exclaimed.
“Love…love…what is love?”
“Not even the first woman who unlocked for you the sweet gateway of love…?”
He shook his head. “Not even the first.”
He seemed like a child with countless toys, enjoying none, stamping upon them, casting them aside, bored and irritated.
I too had experimented with many passions. I, too, had experienced the chill of a frozen kiss. But in spite of it, were there not Mary and Salome and Ulrica and Lydia and Damis and John? I had loved them! They had touched, in one way or another, my soul, leaving upon my memory the imprint of their exquisite loveliness. I had loved! I had not lived in vain! Why had Don Juan never loved?
Kotikokura, his eyes heavy, grinned constantly like a statue of mockery.
“Señor, my friend,” Don Juan said suddenly, “you have mentioned unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged. The phrase sticks in my brain like an arrow.”
“Yes,” I said vaguely.
“What does it mean? Is it acquired by one of the drugs that the Crusaders have brought from the East, or the Moors from China? I have experimented with all. I have applied them externally; leeches have injected them into my blood; I emptied deep phials. The poppy whose sap I consumed never made me experience unendurable pleasure, or if it seemed unendurable, it was never indefinitely prolonged.”
“It is not the poppy, not a drug, señor. Drugs, like apothecary’s scales, weigh minutely their pleasures, demanding in return either an equal amount of pain or a diminution of capacity.”
“Not a drug?” He placed his elbows upon the table and looked at me closely. I remained silent.
“Señor, I swear by the cross that if it is a secret, I shall keep it until I am dust within the dust. Don Juan never breaks his promise—to a man.”
“Don Juan, unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged is possible only for him who loves—woman.”
He stared at me.
“It is neither a drug nor an incantation, but a long and profound study, a gradual training, until the senses perceive with the clarity of an eye, a third eye, an eye that pierces like a sharp tool. It transmutes the body into a conflagration… It turns the vulgar metal to gold…”
Don Juan, his lips parted and brows knit, listened. “Such knowledge, however, Don Juan, is only for the elect, for those who truly love—woman.”
“Señor,” he said, slightly irritably, “this is the second time you have mentioned the fact that one must love woman. I do not understand.”
“Don Juan, is it the truth you seek or polite conversation?”
After a pause, he said a little hoarsely, “From you—the truth.”
“The truth, Don Juan, as it appears to me. Naturally, I may be wrong.”
He nodded.
“Don Juan, you do not love woman.”
“I have told you that myself.”
“You said it without realizing the significance of your confession.”
“What is the significance of my words?”
“You do not love woman, or else you would not pursue her with such vehemence—and bravado. Each new conquest is proclaimed to the world. Don Juan has captured one more! Everybody smiles, admires, and envies. If you loved woman, you would concentrate, would rejoice in the pleasure afforded by one, not in the conquest of many. Your multiple amours are merely an attempt to seek refuge from your own disgust…”
Don Juan breathed heavily and tightened his fist around the cup.
“Shall I continue?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I realized that what I was about to say would strike him as a dagger, Why did I not turn the conversation into another channel? It was still possible. Why did I desire to hurt this man? Was it simply to notice his reaction, to convince myself that my surmise was correct,—or was it perhaps a secret resentment against the enemy of my race…?