Private Life (11 page)

“You know what, I just don’t care anymore. Let it all go to rot!”

“Listen, how much is this note for?”

“Fifty thousand pessetes.”

“And do you know anyone who would still lend you fifty thousand pessetes?”

“Don’t be an idiot! Of course I can find someone. I can get an extension, they just want Papà’s signature.”

“And who is this very … cautious person?”

“You don’t know him. He’s one of my card partners at the Eqüestre.”

“And his name cannot be revealed?”

“Oh, yes, sure. It’s Antoni Mates, the cotton dealer …”

“Antoni Mates? Oh, this is just too rich! Ha, Antoni Mates.”

“What are you talking about, Frederic, you’re too young to know him. What’s with all this silly laughter? He’s a friend of mine, you know, a perfect gentleman.”

“Antoni Mates! The one who bought his title – el Baró de … what was it?”

“Yes, yes, El Baró de Falset.”

“And you spend your time with pigs like him?”

“I am telling you, he is a perfectly respectable person, who did me a great favor. I abused his generosity, and now the man naturally wants some security.”

“All right, Frederic, all right. Congratulations on the friendships you keep.”

“Listen, Guillem, do you realize you’re being a jerk?”

“I do. But, look, let’s speak frankly now, man to man.”

“Don’t get all uppity on me now.”

“Frederic, I assume you do not have fifty thousand pessetes.”

“Of course I don’t.”

“Nor will you have them a year from now.”

“That’s very likely.”

“And Papà wants nothing to do with it.”

“Nothing at all.”

“And there is no one you can go to with your sob story.”

“No one.”

“So now what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Will Antoni Mates swallow the debt?

“How naive can you be?”

“You’re the one who’s naive, thinking he’s such a gentleman and such a good friend. Now let’s imagine Antoni Mates wants the debt to be paid, and this takes precedence over your friendship and your bridge table. Do you think Antoni Mates is capable of such a thing?”

“Not only do I think he’s capable of it, I’m certain that’s exactly what will happen.”

“And your great friendship …?

“Well, friends, maybe we’re not friends … when there’s money at stake, there’s no such thing as friendship. In any case, Antoni Mates is
under no obligation to me. He must have been in a generous mood. Maybe he had had a little too much whiskey. Lately our relations have changed a bit …”

“Listen, Frederic. Do you want to get this note you signed back? Do you?”

“Guillem, unless I pay, I don’t see any way for the note to come back to me.”

“You’re being obtuse. If it were a question of paying so much as a penny I wouldn’t have asked the question.”

“Do you mean I should steal it?”

“Steal? What an inelegant word.”

“Then I don’t get it.”

“Your ‘good friend’ owes me a sort of favor that could obligate him to a an act of absolute generosity. Do you understand now?”

“Listen, I like to play clean.”

“Will Antoni Mates play clean if you don’t pay up?”

“I don’t know, but he will play legal.”

“And to hell with you?”

“All right, that’s enough. If you want to play games, you can play with someone else.”

“I’m not playing games. I want to save your skin, don’t you get it? If you want to play the gentleman, you can pay your debt to Antoni Mates, if you feel so inclined, when you are able. But for now, allow me to speak in our self-interest. I am just as much your father’s son as you are, I carry the same ‘illustrious’ name as you, and, understand me, Frederic, I will also suffer the ill effects of your ‘irregularities’ if
the Lloberola name is left at the mercy of the first Antoni Mates who comes along.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that it is in my interest for you not to pay off this note and for Antoni Mates to send it to you as if he were sending you a box of cigars. I do this not only for you, but for me, as well, and for Papà, and for my own personal business dealings.”

“Go on, Guillem, you must be kidding. I assure you Antoni Mates will not be so generous. It’s impossible, I tell you. Impossible.”

“What do you bet?”

“A thousand pessetes.”

“All right. On one condition. If I lose, I pay nothing, because I don’t have a thousand pessetes. But if I win, you will pay me.”

“That is a ridiculous condition, but I accept. Listen to me, let’s stop talking nonsense, because I don’t believe in miracles … or in your little games …”

As the brothers went on like this, Doctor Claramunt let his voice be heard from the corridor:

“
Bueno, bueno, bueno
, now that he is reconciled with the Lord God, el Senyor Marquès has found some peace of mind.
Bueno, bueno, bueno
, yes, a bit of peace. It was nothing, really nothing, nothing at all … Anxiety, a bit of aggravation. A shame, a shame, that such pious families … 
Bueno, bueno, bueno
,” he trailed off in Spanish.

Frederic escorted the good father out and Guillem slipped off unobtrusively to his bedroom, so as to avoid Father Claramunt’s tiresome theology.

When the name Antoni Mates fell upon Guillem’s ear, he felt a voluptuous and utterly depraved fingernail softly trace the surface of his medulla. Guillem had hid this inexcusable sensation from his brother with a glacial and almost imperceptible smile. Guillem had combined this sensorial gangue, which not everyone can feel, even if he wants to, with a tender, noble, almost childlike sentiment. Because Guillem was not precisely a bad person in the strict sense of the word. He was just a weak, amoral, and selfish person, a man lacking in dignity. A product of the family degeneration, hapless, in a way, capable at certain moments of affection and pure sentiment, and above all capable of that biological bond that exists between two fruits of the same tree.

It is not uncommon for two brothers to be indifferent to each other, or to dislike or even hate each other. Fratricides are relatively frequent events. But all this is no obstacle to the existence of a very special sentiment that is only registered in fraternal relations. This is the sentiment that leads one brother to help another, and in a moment of danger even to give preference to his brother over everything else. We know of families in which two brothers do nothing but insult each other, between whom the physical and moral differences could not possibly be stronger, and in which each aims his life toward a different or even opposite path. But in a moment of true danger – true dangers almost always involving the physical or economic health of a person, because in the face of such dangers, emotional health takes second place – these brothers come together, and they do what they would not do for anyone else. What’s more, the sacrifice made for a brother
doesn’t bear the weight of a sacrifice made for a friend, because it is seen as something natural, biological, a fateful obligation they share with each other. In these moments of danger a family apparently dispersed by circumstance contracts to become a defensive, homogeneous mass. The memory of the maternal entrails that created a series of apparently distinct individuals becomes imperative and turns into a solid cord that binds the hearts of brothers in mutual aid.

We have known families that, even after the most inhuman quarrels, have erased their differences and their distance and their pride in the face of death, a difficult operation, or economic disaster. Thus brother could stand by brother, in such a way and with such expression as perhaps to be the only integrally disinterested and loving sentiment in the world. Because, as we have said, brotherhood does not obey the will, or affection, or any other kind of sentimental fancy. No, it is a purely biological product that falls into the category of the instinct for preservation that all human beings share.

Guillem certainly didn’t have any feelings for his brother. He kept his distance from him, just as he kept his distance from his parents. In ordinary circumstances, they were two brothers united by indifference. But when he heard the name Antoni Mates, Guillem saw the chance to save his brother. It is possible that in his circle there might be some fellow for whom Guillem felt great affection, but it is also possible that if this fellow found himself in a similar situation, Guillem would not have come up with such a rapid, imperative, biological plan to save him. And since in this world good feelings are so often entwined with awful feelings, besides seeing a way to save
Frederic, Guillem also saw a chance to do some mischief. The kind of mischief that would require unbelievable sangfroid to pull off. It was a despicable
chantage
. Naturally, the object of this extortion was by no means immaculate, at least not in Guillem’s eyes. But even so, the act the young man was prepared to carry out was certainly repugnant and, depending on the circumstances, perhaps even risky.

As he evolved in the world, Guillem had turned out to be an inoffensive and cowardly person, like all the Lloberolas. His dissipation had occurred by degrees, in the kind of effortless decline that allows the moral sense to disappear gradually and painlessly, with no active resistance. Guillem considered himself an ordinary man within the unprincipled gray mass of society that sustained him. He had never yet struck a bold and violent blow, hewn to perfection, with artistic flair and a coherent narrative and mise-en-scène. Now, the occasion had arisen, and it did so precisely as a way to save Frederic. Naturally, Frederic didn’t suspect a thing, nor would he ever know what had gone on. And the secrecy and mystery in the transaction that Guillem believed would assure his success only added pleasure and piquancy to the wickedness of his plan.

Shut up in his bedroom, Guillem meditated. He plotted a precise and delicate strategy. The vanity and satisfaction Guillem would feel when he saw his brother’s face in the instant in which he gave him a “gift” of fifty thousand pessetes would be transcendental. The lies Antoni Mates would have to tell and the lies he himself would have to tell in order to justify it all left him breathless with joy.

As he thought and plotted, Guillem realized it was nine o’clock and he was late for dinner at the Cafè-Restaurant Suizo on the Plaça Reial, known to everyone in Barcelona as the “Suís.” Furthermore, he had not yet found the time to go in and see his father. Timidly, he opened the door to Don Tomàs’s room and found him sitting up in bed, swaddled in an enormous frayed woolen shawl, eating his usual semolina soup, happy as a clam.

“What do I hear, Papà, are you not feeling well?”

“No, indeed I am not. And I think you might have …”

“Papà, I just this minute got home, and I’m having supper out.”

“You just arrived and you’re leaving again? What about your poor mother? Will she have to dine alone?”

“They’re expecting me …”

“Go on, go on. Just keep this up, my sons, keep this up, and you’ll see what happens. Oh yes, you’ll see …”

“If I had known, but I am really expected. It would be terribly impolite at this point …”

“Yes, yes! I said yes! Do as you wish, boy, as you wish!”

“Good night, Papà.”

And Don Tomàs de Lloberola and Serradell, swaddled in his tatty woolen shawl, in which he looked like a beggar at a Sant Vincent de Paul conference, slurped his semolina soup in his great-grandfather’s bed, a grand bed of mahogany and gold metal from the time of the Reign of Terror. It had come from Paris in a stagecoach, like those gentlewomen who fled the guillotine only to end up in the old Fonda
of the Four Nations alongside some Italian fan dancer, destined for the bed of the Captain General or the President of the Barcelona Justice Tribunal.

ONE MIGHT HAVE thought Guillem was fleeing the family soup, Swiss chard, and omelet repast for a revelry of skirts,
sauce anglaise
and depravity, but the supper Guillem was bound for was as conventional and honest as they come. The truth is the young man was having dinner at the Suís with a married couple. The fact that he seemed destined to consort with married couples did not mean that the collaboration always had to be unpalatable. In this case, the husband was a young lawyer, a lifelong friend of Guillem’s, by the name of Agustí Casals. Agustí Casals was of humble extraction. His father, an exemplary working man, had reared a good brood of children, sent them all to school, and given each one a start in life. Agustí’s wife was an intelligent young woman who, though she was no beauty, had personality and charm. Agustí Casals earned a comfortable living and had a large apartment furnished with taste and grace. His books were well chosen, he had a horror of appearing extravagant, and his intelligence, and even natural modesty, precluded so much as a whisker of snobbery. Agustí Casals, with his varnish of ordinariness, was in fact a rather spiritual and broadminded young man, especially when you took into account that life had dealt him a difficult hand, that his field of vision had always been limited by work, courtship and family, and
that his knowledge of the world had not been influenced by colorful affairs or voyages or complicated sentimental relations. When it came to women, in fact, he knew only one, because his bachelor indiscretions hadn’t allowed him so much as time for reflection. Agustí Casals made an effort to be well-read and up on things as he made his way. But all in all he had a fresh-faced innocence that he didn’t attempt to hide and wasn’t ashamed to admit. In some aspects of life his criteria were primary and narrow-minded, and with the brutal optimism of a healthy man with no dependencies, Agustí Canals would impose his opinion by laughing, shouting, or getting red in the face and cursing like a longshoreman.