Pepita

by Vita Sackville-West

  Pepita’s interest in Maria Arantave’s possessions was not confined to the flowers: she also caught sight of some little fish in a small pond in the garden and immediately wanted to catch them. Antonio, who seems to have been rather an inarticulate though impassioned young man, remained tongue-tied throughout. He could do nothing but observe Pepita and her mother, who ‘were both very amiable and agreeable, but especially Pepita, who talked much better than her mother. Pepita was very pretty. I did not speak to either of them.’ Through the curt phrases of his legal evidence, I gather that he went through agonies of shyness and infatuation while Pepita exclaimed adorably over the flowers and the fish.

  He was given the chance of seeing that Pepita was neither forgetful of her old acquaintances, however slight, nor unloving as a daughter. She had been absent from Albolote,—perhaps she had gone into Granada for the day, the evidence is not clear on this point,—but anyway she had arrived by the diligence, and was on her way on foot to the Casa Blanca, accompanied of course by the inevitable maidservant. It was in the afternoon, some time before dusk. Antonio was there with his sister as Pepita passed. ‘She stopped and shook hands with my sister and asked how we were. My sister asked her to walk in, but she said she couldn’t as she was anxious to see her mother. I did not see her again, nor have I ever seen her since.’

  One wonders on how many young men during the course of her life Pepita succeeded consciously or unconsciously in making so deep an impression? Wherever she goes, they abound. At Albolote, amongst others, the two brothers Galan fell victims to her charm. Francisco was the more cautious of the two: ‘I used to go to the friendly evenings at Catalina’s house. Pepita was very attractive, dangerously so. I was a young man at the time and she made a great impression on me. If I saw a portrait of her as she then was, I could recognise it without any doubt whatsoever.’ Jose, his brother, the one who had been taught to waltz by Pepita, expressed himself far more recklessly: ‘I remember the love-curl that she always wore on each temple, it made her even more attractive. Her teeth were white as ivory; her tout-ensemble took away sleep. Her hair was black and wavy, her eyebrows black and beautifully long, her nose fine and sharp. Her face and figure remain engraved upon my memory notwithstanding the lapse of time. After she left Albolote I exclaimed to Catalina, “God help me, Pepita is gone and I have not even got her portrait!” Catalina said, “As you like her so much, here, take this portrait as a souvenir of her”. She gave me a portrait of her. I had it for two or three years in a drawer with my papers. I used to look at it sometimes, she was worthy of being remembered.’

  Then comes a touch of humour, I think unconscious: ‘Five years after the portrait was given to me, I married. It was after I married that I missed it.’

  X

  Delightful though Catalina and Pepita were, in their different ways, they were not altogether easy people to get on with. They were both high-handed and hot-tempered on occasion. Such an occasion arose over a dispute with the village priest, which ended in the entire family removing itself, lock, stock, and barrel, from Albolote.

  Perhaps their heads had been a little turned. Friendly and hospitable as they were, in one respect they showed that they considered themselves as slightly better than their neighbours. Catalina, in short, was in the habit of crossing the Plaza to High Mass, preceded by a procession of servants carrying large, red, luxurious armchairs, one for each member of the family, and a smaller chair for Lola whenever she was at home. These chairs were placed in front of the High Altar, before the general public, and immediately after the service they were carried back again. I do not think that Pepita was wholly to blame; she had arrived to find the objectionable practice already in force, though no doubt she gave it her approval. This naturally caused a great deal of talk and resentment in the village. ‘They were the only people who have ever made a practice of taking seats like that. Now and then people take a camp-stool or similar seat when they think the seats provided may all be full, but not luxurious seats like the armchairs. I often saw the chairs being carried. I saw them at Mass soon after they came to Albolote, and they were sitting in their own armchairs.’

  People grumbled, and the extraordinary spectacle of four large armchairs and a smaller one being carried across the Plaza every Sunday and feast-day was watched with black looks, but nothing much was said until the priest himself rebelled. Catalina was heard ‘having words with the S. Cura as to whether she should be allowed to take chairs into the Church. I heard him telling Catalina that the Church was not a theatre (an unkind cut at Pepita) and that the chairs must not be brought.’ Catalina could scarcely resist the S. Cura’s authority, but she could, and did, refuse to attend Mass again. She kept her word. None of them was ever seen in the Church after that incident, and it soon became known in the village that the family was looking out for another property to buy.

  XI

  Meanwhile, the Star of Andalusia was preparing to take her departure. Her holiday was over and Germany was awaiting her for the autumn season. Lionel Sackville-West, in Berlin, was awaiting her too. Her family went to see her off by the diligence. Contrary to what Juan de Dios Gonzalez said, she travelled alone. Francisca Rivira saw them start: ‘I saw Pepita, Doña Catalina, Don Manuel, Lola, and the governess all get into the galera, and that night all returned except Pepita’.

  We can follow her as far as Madrid, for several people saw her there, and the accounts are exceptionally amusing and vivid. First we have the two Guerrero brothers, Rafael and Manuel; Manuel is always turning up oddly in Pepita’s life, but Rafael we have not met before. He is a dancer, of course, though at the time he first sees Pepita in Madrid he happens to be without an engagement. Still, as though unable to keep away from the theatre even though unemployed, he goes as a spectator to the Teatro Puol with three companions named Vilchis, Carrion, and Mazzoli, and there, during the performance, notices that the public attention is attracted to one of the boxes. ‘On looking in the same direction, I saw a very beautiful woman. On expressing admiration to my companions, Mazzoli said it was Pepita Oliva, and as he knew her he went to her box to salute her, and remained there till the end of the performance.’ At the end of the performance, young Guerrero, having lost his friend, returned home and began going to bed. But ‘as I was getting into bed I heard someone knocking at the street railings below, and Mazzoli’s voice calling out, “Guerrero, Guerrero, get up and give a dancing lesson”. I said, “What, at this hour of the night?” and he replied, “What does it matter whether it is one o’clock or two o’clock? Get up and come with me”.’ Guerrero accordingly got out of bed and dressed himself again, and went with Mazzoli to the Hotel Peninsular in the Calle Alcala; on the way there, Mazzoli told him that the lesson was to be given to the beautiful woman they had seen at the theatre. When they arrived, Carrion and a violinist named Raenos were waiting in a room with Pepita. It was then two o’clock in the morning, but Pepita declared that she wanted to learn la Manola then and there. Guerrero was a little uneasy: he knew, as he puts it, that ‘in teaching a dance a great deal of time is necessarily occupied in explaining the different steps and movements’, but Pepita was determined, the lesson began, and lasted with pauses for the next six hours. During one of these pauses Pepita went out on to the balcony, and Guerrero, following her, found that she was crying. He asked her what she was crying for, and she said, ‘Nothing, only family troubles’. She then came back and resumed her lesson.

  They had ‘plenty of refreshments’ while the lesson was going on, and at ten o’clock they all had a meal which Guerrero calls luncheon and which lasted till three o’clock in the afternoon. As none of them had closed their eyes all night, and had been pretty strenuously engaged during all those hours, Pepita dancing, Guerrero directing, the violinist fiddling, and the other two looking on, I imagine that they must all have welcomed their luncheon when it came. Pepita, too, had evidently been overcome by some emotional recollection, but whether it was associated with the mother whom she had left behind i
n Albolote or with Oliva of whom Madrid perhaps too poignantly reminded her, is impossible to say. All we know is that she stood out on the balcony, as dawn crept slowly over Madrid, surprised in tears by a complete stranger, to whom she murmured something vague about family troubles by way of explanation.

  XII

  Then there was Manuel Guerrero, who did not have to be dragged out of bed, but who went more or less by appointment as Director of the ballet at the Teatro Real, in response to a suggestion made by his impresario Jose Mayquiz. He was sitting with Mayquiz at the Café Venecia, that ‘great resort of theatrical people’, when Mayquiz told him he had received a message from a dancer staying at the Hotel Peninsular, and invited him to accompany him there and see her and judge of her dancing. She was anxious, Mayquiz said, to take with her to Germany a cartel (poster) stating that she had danced in Madrid. Guerrero had no idea of the name of the dancer he was being taken to see. He knew only that the Peninsular was the best hotel in Madrid and that she was staying there in the best apartments. He accepted lazily, and strolled with Mayquiz from the café to the hotel, down the Calle Príncipe and the Calle Sevilla; it took them about half an hour, and they reached the hotel about half-past twelve in the afternoon. On arriving, Mayquiz led the way up to an apartment on the first floor with a window overlooking the Calle Alcala. He knocked, and after calling out ‘Who is there?’ a lady opened the door to them, whom Mayquiz immediately introduced, saying, ‘Pepita, allow me to introduce el maestro de baile’. Guerrero recognised her instantly as the girl he had once seen passing down the street outside that very same Café de Venecia, who had been pointed out to him as Oliva’s bride.

  For obvious reasons he looked at her with more than ordinary attention. She was wearing a light-coloured dressing-gown, a gold necklace with a gold pendant in the shape of a heart with a large emerald in the centre, and several diamond rings on her left hand. She was more polished than when he had first seen her, and he was specially impressed by her jewels, which he considered ‘extraordinarily fine’. And he had good reason to think himself a judge of jewels, for at one time during his career he had worked with ‘the great tragedienne Mme Rachel at Marseilles’, whose diadem of brilliants and jewelled girdle he remembered, and whom he described rather irreverently as ‘a walking jeweller’s shop’. Pepita he evidently did not consider over-dressed, for in speaking of her jewels he adds that there was nothing unusual in artistes wearing jewellery ostentatiously in the daytime. The combination of the dressing-gown and the jewels might well have struck him as a little strange, but he makes no comment.

  The three of them sat down together to discuss the somewhat delicate question of how she was to be given a certificate of having danced in Madrid when she had, in fact, never done so. Pepita herself made no bones about the matter: she wanted Guerrero to get her an engagement at the Teatro del Príncipe, so that she might take with her to Germany a poster or a programme showing that she had danced at the first theatre in Spain. Luckily for Guerrero he was able to reply with truth that this would be a difficult thing to accomplish, as neither he nor his friend Mayquiz had any connexion with the theatre in question; nevertheless, he added politely, he would have much pleasure in seeing her dance.

  Pepita went into the adjoining room and came back again with her castanets. She was still wearing the dressing-gown, but she had tied it up with a silk handkerchief round the waist so that they might plainly see the movements of her feet. She then, without any music, danced El Ole for four or five minutes (I should have given much to see this performance in the hotel sitting-room!). At the conclusion of the dance she said to Guerrero, ‘What do you think of it, Maestro?’ Poor Guerrero was obviously embarrassed. What he thought privately, and said afterwards to Mayquiz, was that owing to her beauty, her figure, and her personal charm she would probably make a success abroad, but that in his opinion she was no artist at all as regarded dancing, and that although she might be good enough for Germany she would never be good enough for Spain. Aloud, ‘I replied courteously, “Oh, very good”, although I didn’t think so’. Pepita, who after all had been told in Malaga that she was like a bird in the air and who had already scored considerable triumphs in Germany and elsewhere, seems to have noticed the lack of enthusiasm in his voice, for ‘she turned with an interrogative gesture to Mayquiz, who said, “Well, the maestro likes your dancing very well, but as regards getting you a night at the Príncipe I will do the best I can, but can promise nothing”’. This was not very encouraging, and no doubt Pepita saw the Teatro del Príncipe receding again towards the horizon of her ambitions, for this was the second time she had been plainly shown the inadequacy of her standards for it. She was, however, a good-natured creature when not in a temper, and far from bearing Guerrero and his impresario any grudge she rang the bell and invited them both to stay to luncheon. This meal, which was served in the sitting-room, lasted till three-thirty, Pepita meanwhile making no further allusion to her private affairs, but entertaining both men by her conversation on impersonal topics.

  THE SOLE OF PEPITA’S SHOE

  (actual size)

  The Berlin artist who represented her dancing the Aragoneza has also left a drawing of her dancing El Ole. In the drawing, of course, she is not wearing the dressing-gown, as she danced it for Guerrero, but a tight bodice and short flounced skirt, also a wide sash with long heavily embroidered ends. In her ear is the brilliant ear-ring of which we hear so much; her hair floats loosely far below her waist. Again, as in the other picture, her lips are parted, but this time she is not smiling; there is, on the contrary, something almost threatening in the level glance of the long, dark eyes. She seems to be holding herself in reserve for the rising excitement which is to culminate in the wild dance to follow. Manuel Guerrero recognised the portrait when shown it forty years later; it was exactly the posture in which she used to place herself, he said, although ‘he did not consider it artistic’. However, we already know what Guerrero in his professional way thought of Pepita’s performance.

  XIII

  These were the facts, but Juan de Dios Gonzalez of Albolote had a much more exciting version to tell. There was not a word of truth in it, for Juan de Dios stands high as a fantastic character in this whole story of people none of whom could be described as exactly ordinary. He was a natural liar on the grand scale. As all his neighbours were well aware of this, nobody took any notice of what he said, except to listen with a certain amusement to what Juan de Dios would invent next. The Coadjutor, for instance, had heard him say that he was a Marquis with millions of money in a bank, whereas he was known to be starving at the time. The Coadjutor, in commendably moderate language, added that he had always known Juan de Dios as a ‘flighty, romancing person’, and that he did not consider his statements reliable. Francisco Galan also considered him ‘a flighty person’, and added that he suffered from delusions. He, also, had heard of the Marquisate and of the millions of money in the Bank of Lisbon. ‘He has always been a little queer,’ said Galan tolerantly, ‘and does strange things at times.’ Pedro Quesada, less tolerant, roundly calls him ‘a bad character, in whose statements one can place no confidence’.

  The story he invented on this occasion was a particularly silly one, since it could be contradicted by dozens of people who had daily seen him going about the village. They knew perfectly well that Juan de Dios had never left Albolote to accompany Pepita to Germany as he claimed. For one thing, he was only in his early teens at the time, but that was not the kind of detail to bother Juan de Dios when he had conceived a picture of himself as the squire of a beautiful and celebrated artiste on her travels. According to his own account, he was already in Pepita’s confidence: while still at Albolote, he said, she had told him that she had parted from Juan Antonio Oliva because he had ‘spent seventy thousand dollars in three weeks in gambling, so that the result was that she said to him, “You go your way and I will go mine”’. This, of course, may or may not be true, but it seems unlikely that Pepita would have told a bo
y a thing like that. Juan de Dios probably made it up, as he made up all the rest. It was a most romantic story that he evolved, the oddest mixture of circumstantial detail and utter falsehood. It is quite obvious that his strange unreal mind pieced it together from scraps that he had heard, which makes it wear an air of convincingness until we recollect that there was no truth in the story at all. Such as it is, here is the story in his own words: ‘Pepita left Albolote for Munich. I accompanied her. We went by diligence from Albolote to the French frontier. We left Albolote early in the morning and were four or five days travelling to Madrid. We stopped to sleep at Jaen and Bailen and at one other place which I do not recollect. We stayed in Madrid two or three days. It was my first visit to Madrid, but Pepita told me she had often been there. Pepita did not go to visit anyone in Madrid, nor did anyone go to see her. I went with her wherever she went. She did nothing but take a walk or drive. She was travelling incognita.