(CONTINUED)
Their hopes were not satisfied. And because of this burning desire and exasperation from its lack of fulfillment, the husband and wife grew bitter. Until this time each had taken his own share of responsibility for the misery their children caused, but hopelessness for the redemption of the four animals born to them finally created that imperious necessity to blame others that is the specific patrimony of inferior hearts.
It began with a change of pronouns: your sons. And since they intended to trap, as well as insult each other, the atmosphere became charged.
"It seems to me," Mazzini, who had just come in and was washing his hands, said to Berta, "that you could keep the boys cleaner."
As if she hadn't heard him, Berta continued reading.
"It's the first time," she replied after a pause, "I've seen you concerned about the condition of your sons."
Mazzini turned his head toward her with a forced smile.
"Our sons, I think."
"All right, our sons. Is that the way you like it?" She raised her eyes.
This time Mazzini expressed himself clearly.
"Surely you're not going to say I'm to blame, are you?"
"Oh, no!" Berta smiled to herself, very pale. "But neither am I, I imagine! That's all I needed...," she murmured.
"What? What's all you needed?"
"Well, if anyone's to blame, it isn't me, just remember that! That's all I meant."
Her husband looked at her for a moment with a brutal desire to wound her.
"Let's drop it!" he said finally, drying his hands.
"As you wish, but if you mean..."
"Berta!"
"As you wish!"
This was the first clash, and others followed. But, in the inevitable reconciliations, their souls were united in redoubled rapture and eagerness for another child.
So a daughter was born. Mazzini and Berta lived for two years with anguish as their constant companion, always expecting another disaster. It did not occur, however, and the parents focused all their contentment on their daughter, who took advantage of thier indulgence to become spoiled and very badly behaved.
Although even in the later years Berta had continued to care for the four boys, after Bertita's birth, she vrtually ignored the other children. The very thought of them horrified her, like the memory of something atrocious she had been forced to perform. The same thing happened to Mazzini, though to a lesser degree.
Nevertheless, their souls had not found peace. Their daughter's least indisposition now unleashed--because of the terror of losing her--the bitterness created by their unsound progeny. Bile had accumulated for so long that the distended viscera spilled venom at the slightest touch. From the moment of the first poisonous quarrel Mazzini and Berta had lost respect for one another, and if there is anything to which man feels himself drawn with cruel fulfillment it is, once begun, the complete humiliation of another person. Formerly they had been restrained by their mutual failure; now that success had come, each, attributing it to himself, felt more strongly the infamy of the four misbegotten sons the other had forced him to create.
With such emotions there was no longer any possibility of affection for the four boys. The servant dressed them, fed them, put them to bed, with gross brutality. She almost never bathed them. They spent most of the day facing the wall, deprived of anything resembling a caress.
So Bertita celebrated her fourth birthday, and at night, as a result of the sweets her parents were incapable of denying her, the child had a slight chill and fever. And the fear of seeing her die or become an idiot opened once again the ever-present wound.
For three hours they did not speak to each other, and , as usual, Mazzini's swift pacing served as a motive.
"My God! Can't you walk more slowly? How many times...?"
"All right, I just forget. I'll stop. I don't do it on purpose."
She smiled, disdainful.
"No, no, of course I don't think that of you!"
"And I would never have believed that of you...you consumptive!"
"What! What did you say?"
"Nothing!"
"Oh, yes, I heard you sau something! Look, I don't know what you said, but I swear I'd prefer anything to having a father like yours!"
Mazzini turned pale.
"At last!" he muttered between clenched teeth. "At last, viper, you've said what you've been wanting to!"
"Yes, a viper, yes! But I had healthy parents, you hear? Healthy! My father didn't die in delirium! I could have had sons like anybody else's! Those are your sons, those four!"
Mazzini exploded in his turn.
"Consumptive viper! That's what I called you, what I want to tell you! Ask him, ask the doctor who's to blame for your sons' meningitis: my father or your rotten lung? Yes, viper!"
They continued with increasing violence, until a moan from Bertita instantly sealed their lips. By one o'clock in the morning the child's light indigestion had disappeared, and, as it inevitably happens with all young married couples who have loved intensely, even for a while, they effected a reconciliation, all the more effusive for the infamy of the offenses.