The arrival of Conxa Pujol, the Baronessa de Falset, caused a commotion, as she was coming without her husband. She was escorted by her in-laws, who looked as if their only reason for coming to the party was to accompany her.
It was the first time that Conxa had attended such an event without her husband. She was at the peak of her great beauty. Conxa must have been thirty or thirty-five years old. All the men’s eyes clung like leeches to her cleavage. Her skin was the most fascinatingly foreign and dreamy product ever to grace the streets of Barcelona.
Conxa’s presence stirred up a great deal of commentary. The topic of Antoni Mates was vividly and impertinently present. Everyone had his own personal version of the famous cotton dealer’s state of mind. Many claimed he had gone mad. In one group, they secretly exchanged shady references, but the explanations were completely off the mark. Without a doubt, the main source of these references was the Baró de Falset’s own behavior, and, at most, some particular detail from the market scare, because, in fact, Guillem de Lloberola had not used any of his arsenal against the baron.
Conxa made her way over to the jaunty team after dropping a few crumbs for the old ladies and allowing herself to be subjected to a string of malicious questions.
Hortènsia escaped from the rheumatic team and went over to breathe in a bit of the fragrance of freshly-mown grass that surrounded Conxa Pujol. The baronessa’s only explanation was that her husband was a bit weary, but she said she would not under any circumstances have missed Hortènsia’s big night.
Among the men who decided to wag their tails in the vicinity of Conxa Pujol’s stockings was a young man with curly hair and the face of a child who said a couple of words amid the hurly-burly of men who were melting over the baronessa’s skin. Clearly that young man was not part of the scene, because many asked who he was.
Bobby was in one of those groups, He cleared it up for them:
“That’s Guillem de Lloberola.”
“De Lloberola?” said his interlocutor. “Ah, sure! The brother of that cad, right? Your former friend?”
“Precisely,” added Bobby. Neither he nor his companion said another word.
But Guillem still triggered the following exchange between two other people in the group:
“Who are these Lloberolas?”
“How can I put it?.… I don’t know …, just some old spongers …”
The Marquesa de Perpinyà de Bricall i de Sant Climent made another sensational entrance. She swept in like a dethroned queen, escorted by her son-in-law, a couple of colonels, and her sister-in-law, who was from Valencia and flaunted the title of Duquesa de Benicarló. The Marquesa de Perpinyà wore a very severe black dress with a golden shawl draped over her shoulders. She was ugly and misshapen and her skin was pitted and deathly white, as if coated with cheap stucco. The marquesa belonged to the most authentic nobility in the country. It was said that she had a decisive influence on all echelons of the regime. She could have Captain Generals removed from office, and in Madrid people paid her much mind. The Dictator stopped by her house for coffee every day. Ever since the coup d’état in 1923, the marquesa had puffed up like a bullfrog. Legend had it that the coup was planned in her palace on Carrer de Carders.
The presence of this grande dame pacified a number of the ladies, because in effect it guaranteed that the dictator would be showing up at one point or another. Otherwise, the Marquesa de Perpinyà would not have bothered to attend Hortènsia Portell’s party. The marquesa paraded stiffly among the files of the dumbfounded, and went over to sit under the tapestry, immersed in the poisonous pomp that was beginning to enter a comatose state. Generals bowed to kiss her hand with a cocky and liturgical flourish, and she alternated laughs and hiccups, producing a dry, infrahuman voice, reminiscent of the sound of walnuts rolling around in a sack. In one corner of the great hall there were two middle-aged men. One had a gray moustache and a disabused and absent air, and the other had a lively demeanor and the mouth of a jackal. When the one with the gray moustache caught sight of the Marquesa de Perpinyà, he said to his companion:
“Remember what we were saying about Barcelonism? Now, just take this woman. I know a little about her family history. Her father has gone over it with me many times. The marquesa’s grandfather gave his all for the dynastic Carlists, in opposition to Queen Isabella II. He was in exile in France for ten years; he pawned everything but his shirt. The liberal government confiscated his properties, and he took it like a man …”
“A pointless, foolish enterprise … if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“Pointless and foolish as you like, but in those days people had a little more spine, they knew how to sacrifice, they took life more …”
“Yes, and I have it on good authority that she knows how to sacrifice, too. They say she sold a forest to pay for the party she threw last year for the king and queen …”
“Sure, that’s exactly what she knows how to do, sell forests. You’ll see how things go when she doesn’t have any forests left to sell. And it’s not all her fault, she’s under the pressure of her son-in-law. What can you expect of a duke who’s an ex-croupier and polo champion? He feeds his vanity with his mother-in-law’s money.”
“You can’t deny that she’s a lady who know how to be a lady. She has a certain majesty …”
“The majesty of the domicile.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Oh, sure you do. I mean, people like La Perpinyà and other families cut from the old cloth, if you take them out of the house they live in, they are nothing. They never move from their decaying old manors on the most anti-hygienic streets of Barcelona. The manors hold their gardens, their salons and their chapels. Do you know what it is to live in an immense apartment half taken up by rooms full of junk in which, to add insult to injury, there is a chapel and a chaplain who says Mass? All their tradition can be summed up in the leaks in the ceilings and the mildew on the walls. And beyond those walls, you see, extends the life they have never understood: Barcelona. What have all these people done for the country, what have they contributed? Absolutely nothing. As long as they have forests to cut down, a domestic priest at home to say Mass, and a couple of servants to dust the chairs, they keep going. When all this is gone, they’re nobody. The marquesa has the same mentality as her house on Carrer de Carders. A sad and useless mentality. Her father was Catalan. He was a man who still spoke Catalan. What is she? How does this woman feel about her country and its oh-so-noble traditions? Well, this is how she feels: she marries her only daughter off to a ruined duke from Cartagena who seems to be nothing but a perfect swine, and she runs around like a madwoman behind the imbecile who is mucking things up for all of us …”
“Be careful, man, lower your voice.”
“You tell me if I’m right or not, about this majesty of the domicile. Take the Lloberolas, for example. As long as the Marquès de Sitjar lived on Carrer de Sant Pere més Baix he seemed to be someone. Now he is penniless in an apartment that could just as easily belong to a shopkeeper, and he’s poor Senyor Tomàs, and nothing more. They are people who are incapable of reacting, of living life as it comes. And the marquès’s sons are worse than the sons of my shoemaker. Look at the younger one, over there, yes, the one who’s chatting with the wife of old Mates. He’s nothing but a rascal who will end up in jail.”
“You’re just saying that because you think the Catalan aristocracy has fallen short. But do you really think this pack of pork vendors with titles are any better?”
“Well, I’m not sure if they’re better or worse. Morally, they may be worse, and that’s saying a lot. But they combine their arriviste vanity with an interest in work, an interest, if you will, even in stealing and dirty business. That’s at least something …”
“Well, thanks a lot!”
“Look, what I mean is that among these people, no matter how low-class they are, there are at least some who have initiative, ambition. They get factories rolling, they get banks rollin
g. They put the stomach of the country to work … Some of these ladies, the ones wearing the most diamonds and speaking the worst Castillian, because they grew up speaking Catalan and working, and never went to school, have husbands who still work twelve hours a day …”
“I find this line of reasoning unpersuasive. You’re just a materialist …”
“And what of it!”
“In any case, all this hoi polloi with their new money earned who knows how, are also running after the dictator and the current regime just as fast as the old aristocrats you criticize.”
“They’re running even faster! They’re chasing him because they can profit from it. And the women do it out of vanity. Since they’re people without convictions, they don’t waste any time. Now they’re supporting this silly general, and tomorrow they’ll throw their weight behind a republic or the communists, if it means a few quartos. Do you see all these gentlemen who are bowing and scraping and collaborating on everything that does the country the greatest harm? Many of them used to vote for la Lliga de Catalunya back when we could vote, and they dressed their daughters in the little white hoods of the Pomells de Joventut – the Catholic, Catalan bouquets of youth! – until the dictator dissolved the association.”
“Well, you’re right there. You Catalanists are certainly not making a very good show for yourselves …!”
“Real Catalanists are few and far between. Back in the glory days of Catalan politics, Prat de la Riba used to say there were no more than a hundred at most. And that’s being generous.”
“Prat de la Riba died in 1917. Hasn’t there been any progress since then?”
“More than likely the number has gone down … Do you see that fellow devouring Aurora Batllori’s cleavage? That fellow was as staunch and fierce a Catalanist as they come. Now he’s accepted a very important commission the Marquès de Foronda procured for him, and some say he is a police informer …”
“Really?”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised. In any case, I’m going over there under the trees, because the ‘beast’ must be about to arrive …”
“Yes, and you continue to talk at the top of your lungs! I don’t know why you even come to these places. A separatist like you! And tomorrow in the social pages of the paper your name will appear right beside the names of these people you find so disgusting …”
“You’re probably right to criticize me. But what’s a man to do? I came out of friendship with Hortènsia. Because I certainly don’t have a good time at these affairs … In the end, though, each of us has his share of cowardice …”
Guillem de Lloberola had met Conxa Pujol just a few days before. They were introduced in a group standing at the Ritz. The baronessa didn’t sense anything special about the boy; she didn’t even notice him, just as she didn’t notice him at Hortènsia’s party. Many young men like Guillem had been introduced to Conxa, and they immediately faded from her memory. What happened to the Baró de Falset when he met Guillem didn’t happen to Conxa: she didn’t recall a voice, she didn’t feel any panic, partly because the two shameful episodes in which Guillem had played a role were enveloped in an olio of darkness and mystery. And partly because after the chantage, those two shameful episodes represented the most chilling phantasm of Antoni Mates’s life. For his wife they only represented two more shameful episodes among a multitude of shameful episodes.
In the days of the chauffeur, and even before then, Conxa had had her own feasts for the goddesses. Like a figure out of Juvenal, Conxa had paid many afternoon visits to houses of infamy, and had taken advantage of trips abroad to engage in a sport in whose practice someone from her world would never be recognized. She derived pleasure from being brutalized by scum. Fed up with endless flattery from all sides, she found a very special voluptuosity in the thrusting and biting of a drunken sailor. This creature whom evil tongues had claimed to see arch her back in the air like a grouper out of water, continued to arch her back like all the fish in the sea.
Her mysterious afternoon adventures left her with an ailment that required the intervention of Cuyàs, the dermatologist. Conxa had to offer him some explanation, but, like all good dermatologists, Cuyàs kept his professional counsel.
Cuyàs was one of Hortènsia’s guests. He smiled at the Baronessa de Falset with utmost politeness. The two rather blond young men he was with had contradictory opinions about the baronessa.
“She’s not such a big deal. We all know where she came from. I don’t get all the whoop-de-doo about her.”
“She’s ‘out of this world.’ ”
“Just another pretty face …”
“Come on, you’re exaggerating. I say she’s ‘out of this world,’ truly out of this world.”
“I know another girl who’s out of this world and nobody pays her any mind and she’s available to anyone. Yeah, yeah, don’t give me that look – she’s just as ‘out of this world’ as this one.”
“And what’s the name of this beauty?”
“She has only one name: Camèlia.”
“And her address?”
“Carrer de Demòstenes, 31. Every afternoon, from four to eight. Price: twenty-five pessetes.”
Dr. Cuyàs smiled without saying a word, but his eyes were saying “This fool doesn’t know the first thing about Carrer de Demòstenes. He just wants to play the enfant terrible. But, to be honest, maybe he’s not that far off.”
On the last stroke of twelve there was a great commotion and a sort of general “Aaaah …!” Five or six ramrod-straight individuals had just come into the house. Among them was a tall florid man with thin white hair. He was fatigued and ordinary, a cross between a police inspector and a canasta player, with a touch of the priest and a touch of the lion tamer. It was General Miguel Primo de Rivera.
Many ladies frankly threw themselves at him. Cuyàs the dermatologist whispered into his neighbor’s ear:
“My God, how many of the young creatures here today wouldn’t give anything in the world to be raped by that old goat?”
Primo de Rivera strode over to the most glittering and crusty group. His eyes popped at the sight of Teodora Macaia’s supple skin, and his lips were coated with a dense saliva. Primo de Rivera had had a long day and he was tired. His cheeks wore the natural rouge of wine.
The ladies pawed at him. He proferred highly spiritual words in return. To his nearest and dearest, he told a filthy unexpurgated story from the barracks. The ladies choked with laughter.
The Marquesa de Lió, who didn’t leave his side, said to him, in Spanish:
“Ay, Miguel! You are so funny, so salty, saladísimo!”
And amid the cackling of the old ladies, that saladísimo kept echoing, floating in the night air like a drowned man’s shoe.
The merriment lasted till quarter to four in the morning.
THE DAY AFTER Hortènsia’s party, at a poker game played many afternoons at Rafaela Coll’s house, a trip to the red light district off the Rambla known as the Barri Xino was organized. The name alluded and, in a way, paid homage, to the vice and filth of Chinatown in San Francisco. The co-conspirators for the escapade were Rafaela, Teodora Macaia, Teodora’s best friend, Isabel Sabadell, Hortènsia, Bobby, the Comte de Sallès, Pep Arnau and Emili Borràs: two widows, two divorcées, three bachelors and one married man. Rafaela had been a widow the longest; she had already been to La Criolla and other dives. So had Hortènsia. Teodora and Isabel, the two divorcées, had not. Isabel and Teodora had been friends all their lives, and both had been unlucky in marriage. They were both a little tired of their own feelings. Teodora had very few illusions; Isabel, who was prettier and more sentimental, still believed in love and in the relative fidelity of her friend, Ferran Castelló. Among the men, the Comte de Sallès, the married one, was a most eccentric and charming fellow. He took the dress code, neckties and rouge very seriously. He was romantic, childish, and a little silly. When he took a paramour out for dinner, he would order roses for the table in the color of the soul of the woman h
e had invited. It was all the same if she was an interesting person or the most brazen turner of tricks, the count behaved towards her just as he would have behaved if the fates had conceded him the grace of dining with the mummies of Madame de Sévigné or Madame de Lafayette.
The Comte would speak of literature, politics, and international elegance with a certain innocent fancy, often unaware that he was boring the lady. They would tolerate him as one tolerated a child who was not only extremely polite but also paid very generously and always without offending. The childlike count had his stubborn side and his lyrical fugues. Sometimes he would stop mid-word in a conversation, and affect a sort of beatific smile. One could see a minuscule boat sailing through his blue eyes. It was the little boat that carried him off to glide through the dead waters of the moon. The count was a cross between an elegant and original man and a simpleton. He was misunderstood in his milieu. Society folk made fun of him behind his back. They thought he was a crashing bore, but at heart they appreciated him because he was a good person. To tell the truth, the count was far superior to all the people who would address him with the familiar “tu” when they found themselves having their hair cut next to him in the barbershop of the Club Eqüestre. With his great concern for aristocratic refinement, in Barcelona he was like Robinson Crusoe on the desert island. He would escape to Paris to see his friends at the Jockey Club. There he would seek out a mad duchess from the Faubourg St.-Germain, a veritable wax figure with whom he could talk of dogs, horses, religion, and the nobility, most particularly of Eugénie Montijo, the Spanish marquesa who became the last empress of the French when she married Napoleon III.
Emili Borràs was just as eccentric as the count. He was a mathematician who took a great interest in the visual arts and in women’s fashion. He enjoyed this elegant and somewhat trashy world purely as spectacle. Cold, evasive, inconsistent, and fragile in a feminine sort of way, he never let down his guard. Some said he had no blood in his veins. He was the purest example of an intellectual to be found in Barcelona society in those years. Emili Borràs was very successful with women because of his special way of being chic, a bit negligent and apparently offhanded. He was well liked because his conversation was never vulgar. It fluctuated between disconcerting naiveté and putrid cynicism. Emili Borràs was Catholic, and he worked for a living.
Private Life Page 19
