The truth is--and it would do no good to conceal it, because it will be made very evident in the course of this story--that I had not merely no affection or respect for my Uncle Felipe, but not even any sort of attachment or as much as gratitude for the favors he was conferring upon me. Quite the contrary. I know it does me no credit to say so, and that ingratitude is the ugliest of faults; but I know, also, that I am not naturally ungrateful, and in order to justify, or at least explain myself, I will sketch in silhouette my Uncle Felipe’s physical and moral characteristics, to do which I must allude to some matters that are of the nature of family secrets.
My baptismal name is Salustio, my paternal surnames are Meléndez Ramos, my maternal, Unceta Cardoso. That name Unceta indicates plainly that my mother’s father was a Basque, and came from Guipuzcoa, to be more exact; and Cardoso--that’s where the mischief comes in. It seems that the Cardosos of Marín--I was born in Pontevedra, and my mother’s family came from the little seaport of Marín--were a broken branch of the Portuguese trunk of Cardoso Pereira, a Jewish trunk, if there is such a thing. How did the fact come to my knowledge that my mother’s ancestors were Jews? Just find out if you can who tells these things to children. One day when I was nine or ten, unable to restrain my curiosity any longer, I asked my mother:
“Mamma, is it true that we belong to the Jewish race?”
With fire flashing from her eyes, she lifted her hand and cuffed my ears soundly, crying:
“If you say that again, I’ll break all the bones in your body!”
That chastisement left the impression in my mind that to be a Jew was a sore disgrace; and two or three years later, when one of my school-mates at Pontevedra threw it in my face, calling out,
I seized my slate and broke it over his skull.
I cannot be sure when I reached the religious crisis, or that period in which boys scrutinize their beliefs, sift them and finally discard them, feeling a pain from the loss of their faith like that caused by the pulling of a double-tooth. I do not think I ever experienced such a change, or felt such agonizing doubts, or such remorse and longing when looking upon a Gothic church. I was naturally skeptical and took up, if not with atheism, at least with religious indifference, as if it were something perfectly congenial to me.