The Great Simplicity

The Four Horsemen — By Vincente Blasco Ibañez

There is no need for the three loud solemn blasts of American criticism which herald this translation of ‘Los Cuatro Jinetes del Apocalipsis’; for although the fine edges are blurred and the whole is misted over by the heavy fingers of Charlotte Brewster Jordan, it is recognizable almost immediately as a powerful and distinguished novel. We say almost, for the first chapter, skilful and not extraordinary, in no wise prepares us for the magnificent second chapter, giving a description of the life of an aged Argentine landowner and chief, his family, dependents and possessions. Madariaga the Centaur is the author's name for the foolish, wise old millionaire; it could not be more apt. As we read we are haunted by a vision of troops of horses, streaming away and away over limitless prairies, being rounded up, stamping and quivering and tossing their brilliant heads and then off again in a bounding line against the far horizon, until all that happens seems to become a part of this rich free life and rhythm.

To the old man there comes a young Frenchman, Desnoyers, seeking employment; the master takes a fancy to him. ‘He's a regular pearl, this Frenchy…. I like him because he is very serious. That is the way I like a man.’ Desnoyers becomes part of the family and marries the elder daughter, Chica; the younger, La Romantica, runs away with another of the employees, a timid, weak creature who has been forced to leave Germany under a cloud. Madariaga detests Von Hartrott and detests his children

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… with hair like a shredded carrot and the two oldest wearing specs…. They don't seem like folks wearing those glasses; they look like sharks. Madariaga had never seen any sharks, but he imagined them, without knowing why, with round glassy eyes like the bottoms of bottles.

But he gave the whole of his savage old heart to Desnoyers' children, Julio and Chichi, teaching them, before they were eight years old, to ride, to eat beefsteaks for breakfast and to lasso wild horses.

When he died he left an enormous fortune to each of the two families, and the Von Hartrotts went off to Berlin to live in splendour, while the Desnoyers, not to be out-done, set up their home in Paris. By this time Desnoyers himself is old, and Julio and Chichi shorn of their wildness are exquisite, extravagant young persons, as Parisian as it is possible to be. Only the fat, comfortable Chica is the same.

When the war breaks upon them, Julio is an artist, a celebrated tango dancer and the lover of a famous society woman; Chichi the butterfly, is engaged to a senator's son, and the father is become almost a maniac for buying rich furniture, motor-cars—all kinds of fantastic possessions for his splendid apartment in Paris and his castle at Villefranche-sur-Marne. They, with the rest of the world are lifted upon the huge ugly wave and shaken and tumbled, and strangely, at this moment, the mantle of Madariaga seems to descend upon old Desnoyers; he becomes, in the sober sense of the words, a great character. Full of fear for his treasures at the castle, and especially for an immense gold bath, the purchase of which he considered the culminating achievement of his wealth, he rushes off to the rescue—too late. The Germans are there, and the strange old man has to stand by, staring stupidly while they break up and plunder his toy, and kill the innocent villagers.

It is a dreadful fact that since it has been our misfortune to read so much and so much of the horror of war page 49 we have become almost indifferent to it. We accept—we nod at a repetition—‘There it is; there's the old tune played again’—but how moved are we? But when we are confronted by the figure of old Desnoyers, not taking part in it, just looking on, powerless and helpless, at the great laying-waste of life, the familiar tune becomes again an unbearable agony to hear.

Señor Ibañez does not believe in the purifying fire; or that out of evil good will come; or that God works in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; he believes that war is Hell. Neither can there be any line drawn so that here we are at war and here we are not at war. When old Desnoyers returns to Paris all is just as terrible as it was at Villefranche-sur-Marne, and the fact that because of it Julio turns soldier and goes off to fight for his father's country and Chichi learns the anguish of love is not the result of a divine accident but of a diabolical one. The young men die in battle, but the women and the old men die just as surely in the battle against unseen, untiring enemies who can never be driven back.

Just as Madariaga in his old age gave his heart to Julio, the little wild fearless boy, so does Desnoyers live for his soldier son. Everything is changing, scattering, quaking, he feels that at any moment the earth may be swallowed up, yet he has this instinctive faith, very absurd, very firm that … ‘No one will kill him. My heart, which never deceives me, tells me so. … None will kill him.’ How many fathers in these hideous years have echoed these words? Chica, the anxious sorrowing mother, has her consolations; she can talk, she can go to church, weep, send Julio comforts, but the father's worn-out old heart beats only to ‘my son, my son.’ And Julio is killed.

The last chapter describes a visit by the Desnoyers family to the battlefield where Julio is buried:

Tombs … tombs on all sides! The white locusts of death were swarming over the entire countryside. There was no corner free from their quivering wings. page 50 The recently ploughed earth, the yellowing roads, the dark woodland, everything was pulsating in unresting undulation. The soil seemed to be clamouring, and its words were the vibrations of the restless little flags….

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.

All was ended.

‘The Four Horsemen’ is not a subtle novel; the characters are simple, their emotions are simple and direct. But however complicated our acquired existence may be, we are, when the last clever word has been spoken, simple creatures. Living in this dishonourable age, it is a strange, great relief to us to have that simplicity recognized so nobly by Señor Ibañez.