Private Life (18 page)

Ripoll’s ambition had sucked so deeply into her face that blood would have surged to the most academic lips. Her nose, chiseled slightly upward, seems still to be breathing in the sweat and fragrances of a masked ball. Her eyes reveal nothing but the great discretion hidden in her irises, green as the impenetrable gray green of the flounder’s slimy skin. And her hair, part gold, part ash, has something of a storm and something of the moss on a stone, a sort of geological romanticism reminiscent of the verses of Verdaguer’s
Atlantis
.

But the Pilar Romaní of the portrait precedes by many years the initial events of the story we are writing. When Bobby escorted Frederic to Mado’s house, the widow Xuclà was a matron well into her seventies; she and Bobby, the only child she had with the Semite banker, still lived in her house on Carrer Ample.

In her dotage, the widow Xuclà had been seized by the intransigence of social caste regarding the growing materialism and loss of control of Barcelona society. This genuine lady, who had caused such scandal as a young woman with her democratic and slightly uncouth attitudes, brandished the very same rigidity of which she had been the victim in her day against the loosening of principles that affected the beauties of the present day. When they told her Senyoreta X had taken as a gigolo a store clerk whose only merit was to have built up his biceps a bit at the Club Nàutic, or that Senyora R. had mortified her husband by word and deed before a gathering of young men at the golf club, and that yet another lady had taken a taxi to a
meublé
on the Diagonal, or that the Baronessa de T., in the midst of her divorce proceedings, had made an appearance at a cabaret only attended by prostitutes and the occasional inexperienced married couple from the provinces, Pilar Romaní was filled with indignation. Not in the tone a lady of Leocàdia’s temperament might have used, but in that of an old fox who has seen it all, but who still demands a bit of etiquette and a bit of dignity even in unavowable affairs. Though Pilar Romaní had been broadminded and paid little heed to the morality of her times, there were some lines she had been very careful not to cross. She had been careful to drape even her vices or caprices in a
romantic gauze, revealing only a delicate silhouette of poetry and distinction. Even though she and Ripoll had caused tongues to wag, still the painter had been no vulgar passion, and Pilar Romaní had taken care to embroider the letters of a sentimental, mentholated novel on their relationship. When she spoke of these outrageous young women, the widow Xuclà would use her own very picturesque and somewhat crude way of speaking, which in time had turned rather bitter. Sometimes a phrase uttered by Pilar would subsequently be reported in a half dozen places, commented upon, laughed at by the men and sharpened to a fine point, whereupon inevitably it would reach the ears of the woman in question. Behind Pilar Romaní’s back, her humor was considered the “tantrums of a doddering old witch,” but no one dared say such a thing to her face.

In time, the widow Xuclà suspended her get-togethers and visits and called on fewer and fewer homes. Among the very few exceptions was the home of Hortènsia Portell. If Hortènsia threw a party, Pilar Romaní’s presence was assured. She would enter with the air of a queen, and all the ladies yielded to her. They would needle her to get her talking. Some days she would be gloomy and reserved, and would pretend to be deaf for conversations that went too far. Other days she would be in a friskier mood, and she would nibble away in the sharp and dainty way of a ferret. The widow Xuclà’s clothing was always a bit old-fashioned, in shades perhaps too light and bright for a lady of her age. She was tall and strong; no one could have guessed her age. She was a magnificent specimen, and her wrinkled and shrunken features still resisted old age to reveal the traces of a great beauty.

The widow Xuclà would attend Hortènsia Portell’s salon, above all, out of a particular liking for that plump, fashion-conscious woman, and because in Hortènsia’s circle of vulgar elegance she could still find the occasional intelligent man. He would be a sad, skeptical character without pretensions with whom she might enjoy a long conversation about Catalan affairs and hear a few things that might have a bit of spirit and spark. Pilar Romaní no longer learned of anything on her own account. She read no newspapers, nor any new books. She lived off her memories. All art and literature had come to a stop for her before the War in Cuba, when she would invite the people of sensibility of the day to her house on Carrer Ample. Pilar Romaní was of the opinion that the best things had come and gone, that the literati wrote so that no one would understand them, that modern art – her idea of modern art was more quirky than she herself – was insufferable, and that painters were bent on making life ugly and deforming the grace of things.

She would criticize some young women’s lack of taste, their unattractiveness, their absolute ignorance, their precarious ambition, their lack of personality and resulting willingness to be swept away entirely by what was au courant and fashionable. She would criticize the cowardly morality of some, and the inexcusable lack of modesty of others, and what most disgusted her was the snobbish enslavement to the latest thing and to American fashion. She bemoaned the loss of character and the mongrelization that had swept Barcelona. The big fashion houses and the automobile had leveled everything out. Pilar Romaní couldn’t countenance the fact that, simply because she
possessed a magnificent Hispano-Suiza automobile, a woman who had come from who knows where was invited to dinner and supper at the homes of the daughters of the same old aristocratic dowagers who years before had hung her out to dry.

The widow Xuclà had a penchant for going off on her own. Many mornings she would go out with her chauffeur and barrel down the highway until she found a nice place where, with the help of her eyeglasses, she might work on a sweater for the daughter of the concierge or for some member of her household staff. The widow Xuclà took an enormous interest in people of more humble condition. She liked to talk with the workingmen and the servants, and in the summer she would spend long hours with the people who tended her land. She was lavish, and generous to a fault, and a tear or two was enough to take her for all she was worth.

Her true friends were few and far between. She was close to another lady of her time, a distant relative, the Marquesa de Descatllar. She was more acid-tongued and more class-bound than Pilar Romaní, and she was absolutely outrageous. The marquesa had been separated from her husband for many years, and in her case it was absolutely true that she had no relations at all with anyone. Pilar Romaní always defended her in her circle, maintaining that she was a true lady and had been very unfortunate. The marquesa had a dark complexion and hard, virile features. She went around with narrowed eyes as if everything disgusted or infuriated her. No matter what turn fashion took, she always wore a bunch of dyed black bird-of-paradise feathers hanging over her forehead. They looked as if they had been
plucked from the headdress of a cannibal leader. Stories were told of shameful contact between the marquesa and brutish subjects of the lowest extraction. In the afternoon she would often go to the Paral·lel with her chauffeur and her manservant to see bawdy shows or revues with a great deal of naked flesh on display. She would generally sit half-hidden in a box seat on the mezzanine. Pilar Romaní would occasionally accompany her on these theatrical excursions. They had a particular liking for Catalan vaudeville, with beds and underwear onstage.

From a distance, the marquesa had a magical effect. In the days when only two-horse carriages traveled up and down the Passeig de Gràcia, the marquesa, dark and solitary in her open sedan, contrasted with the pale cream, pea green or turquoise blue mistresses under their monumental hats, complemented by a dog who might have been stolen from a Van Dyck canvas.

At the height of summer, the Marquesa de Descatllar and Pilar Romaní always went abroad together. Some years they would go to Marienbad, but later, as they got older, they found the trip too long. Then they wouldn’t get any farther than the baths at Luchon, or they would drop in for a few days at Biarritz.

On the beach, the two ladies made fun of the female fashions and customs, of the lack of breasts and the diminishing hips. They thought the craze for turning the skin into an artifact resembling a cocoa bean or a jacaranda wood desk was absurd. From the terrace, the two ladies would spend hours and hours under the shelter of a garish, antiquated umbrella and, with the aid of their opera glasses,
they would destroy the fabric of the flashiest beach pajamas and what little flesh they covered up. A blink of the marquesa’s eyes was as implacable as a hair clipper.

Occasionally, they would become entranced with the maillot and the curly nape of some sporty, boorish and optimistic young man, and they would savor him from afar, with deliberation. They would digest him slowly and carefully, like serpents, with all the bitterness and impotence of depraved old women.

Another friend of the widow Xuclà’s was Lola Dussay, who was the polar opposite of the marquesa.

Lola Dussay was older than Pilar, but not by much. She lived on Carrer de Montcada, in a three-hundred-year-old house that was starting to collapse. The ground floor, the stables, and the courtyard, had been rented to an individual who kept a drug warehouse there. Lola lived on the
principal
, the main floor of her large noble home, which was enormous for her and the two maids and one manservant who attended her. Lola was single, religious, and prim and proper, but she shared with the widow Xuclà a taste for tradition and popular culture. Lola didn’t have so much as a particle of intelligence; she was loud, fussy, and rude, all things she compensated for with an enormous heart and an absolute selflessness. Every spring Lola would throw a party at her house. She only abandoned this custom four years before she died. Her guests were old stock, faded and reactionary. They were married couples who lived in their own world and young men with medallions around their necks, heraldic coats of arms on the rings between the hairs on their fingers and
genuine imbecility diluted throughout their bodies who came to fish for fiancées. Lola was as simpleminded as an octopus, and at these parties some, it seems, had taken advantage of her innocence in the dark, damp, and interminable corridors of her house on Carrer de Montcada, as the chandeliers trembled in the salons, excited by the upheaval of a polka.

Lola spent her days and nights caring for the ill, visiting midwives and expressing condolences. Her main passion was cooking, and her greatest joy was the killing of the pig. Lola had hair white as snow, an enormous belly, and cheeks that were red and taut from the heavy food she prepared. She would spend long hours in the kitchen, sweating and overheated, preparing sauces and tending to roasts. Among her best friends was Don Felicià Pujó, just as much an old bachelor as she was a spinster. Don Felicià Pujó was President of the Brothers of Peace and Charity. He was cold, gentle, and delicate in the extreme. There were those who took for granted that Lola Dussay and Don Felicià Pujó were secretly married. What is beyond all doubt is that Lola expected Don Felicià Pujó to partake of her culinary marvels. Sometimes at midday, when Don Felicià got home from sitting in the sun, he would find Lola Dussay’s manservant in his foyer with the following mission:

“Donya Lola sent me,
senyoret
, because today the pig’s feet have turned out first-rate and she would like the master to come and try them.”

Don Felicià Pujó, who was dyspeptic, would sadly shrug his shoulders, put on his mid-crown top hat, pick up the cane he always
carried with an ivory dog’s head for a handle, and set out for Carrer de Montcada to dine on pig’s feet. Later, at home, no cannula or thyme infusion would suffice to calm his irritable bowels.

Despite Lola Dussay’s religious devotion, she liked to use blue language. This was not out of malice, but stupidity, as often she didn’t understand the double-entendres, and she repeated everything she heard, whether it made sense or not.

Pilar Romaní appreciated her cooking talents and her frivolous, picturesque, and singular way of living her life.

The house on Carrer Ample was decorated according to the banker Xuclà’s taste, with the counsel of persons like Ripoll the painter, whom Pilar considered to be peerless. The house had all the heavy, gold-leaf pomp of the turn of the century. Bobby had made a few more modern contributions, but only in moderation so as not to hurt the widow’s feelings.

Bobby loved his mother a great deal, though days and days could go by without their exchanging a word. Much more intelligent than most of the people in his milieu, Bobby was subdued, and rather shy. He was in the habit of never contradicting anyone and never arguing with anyone, more out of apathy than anything else. He was skeptical and tolerant; he almost never laughed, but neither did he get angry. He had inherited from his mother a natural and unaffected elegance, and a pure essence of Barcelona that transcended time and space, or literature and politics. Bobby wasn’t au courant, nor did he want to be. He tended to express very vague and noncommital opinions. Perhaps the clearest vestige in Bobby of his family’s
Jewish heritage was a somewhat reptilian flexibility that allowed him to put on a smile that was neither hot nor cold, a smile that was sort of who-gives-a-damn, yet not at all offensive, in the face of the things that usually spark men’s passions. It was more a product of indolence or of a delicate egoism born of not wanting to be get worked up about anything.

Bobby understood his mother’s way of life, and he respected it in every way. He had a very high opinion of his father; he understood his dynamism and his infidelities, and he saw fit to apply prudent and conservative principles to his enjoyment of the fortune his father had left them.

Bobby was the ideal lover. His continual contact with women was neither out of vanity nor because he was a man of passion. Bobby was often bored, and he found women amusing. With women, moreover, he could avoid having to talk: he could let them do the talking. He enjoyed their world of little squabbles and henpecking, and above all he liked to breathe in the superfluous warmth that flows from blood to pearls and from pearls to gossip.