Pepita

by Vita Sackville-West

  It was of course inevitable that Catalina and Pepita should quarrel sooner or later over the baby. It must have been just before Pepita was due to return to Germany; Max was short-coated by then, and she wanted to take him away with her. Catalina opposed the idea, with the result that Pepita lost her temper and left the house, calling to one of the servants to accompany her, which he did, thereby increasing Catalina’s fury. They crossed the road to the house of a neighbour, Jose Mendez, and Pepita sent for a carriage to drive her into Granada. The servant returned, to be so soundly rated by Catalina that he immediately went off to join Pepita again. Pepita remained for two days sulking in a hotel in Granada, then suddenly arrived in the diligence, sent into the house for her luggage and Max, and took her departure without having alighted. (I wonder how she managed to keep the diligence waiting for so long, since it was, after all, a public conveyance?) Catalina, Lopez, Lola and Rafaela all went out to say good-bye to her, so perhaps they did not part on bad terms. Anyhow, she had got her way, for Max and his nurse went with her. They went off to meet Lionel Sackville-West in Germany.

  II

  After this, the existence of Pepita and Lionel Sackville-West becomes almost domestic. They had a house at Heidelberg and another one at Hackenfeldt; they shared the expenses, Pepita paying the wages and my grandfather paying the household bills; sometimes they were quite alone in the house with their child and the Spanish nurse; at other times they had a proper establishment with a cook and two housemaids. They were both busy, he with his diplomatic engagements, she with her career as a dancer, but whenever they were able to be together their existence appears to have been idyllic. Once they contrived to spend two whole months together; it was the longest time they had ever had.

  By this time Catalina must have realised the true state of affairs. I do not see how she can have failed to do so, for her own sister went to stay at Heidelberg,—an incident which reveals Pepita in her most generous and warm-hearted light. This sister, Micaela, had always been devoted to Pepita; as she puts it quite simply in her evidence, ‘I loved my niece Pepita very much. In my eyes there was no more beautiful woman.’ She it was who had stayed behind to look after Pepita while Max was being taken to his christening.

  This Micaela found herself in great distress, for her husband’s eyes began to fail, the doctors in Malaga said he was incurable, and for eight months he was totally blind. ‘I was in sore trouble and said to myself, “My God, what shall I do? I will write to my niece Pepita.” A letter was written in my name to tell her that my husband was blind; I cannot write and do not remember who wrote for me, but I told the person who wrote the letter to address it to Doña Pepita Duran, Heidelberg, Alemania. I knew that was her address because she had already sent me money and gifts. I sent her a certificate of the facts signed and sealed by the parish priest, so that there should be no doubt of the truth of what I said. I received a telegram from her, saying that there was a good doctor in Heidelberg, and that she thought he could cure the blindness, and that if we would like to go we were to go. After this I received a letter from her enclosing a sum of money, perhaps about 100 pesetas, for our personal expenses on the way to Marseilles.’

  With her blind husband and her two daughters aged eleven and four she embarked for Marseilles. In spite of Pepita’s promptness and generosity, they must have gone on a small and dilatory boat, for the voyage lasted a fortnight. The boat stopped for two or three days at Alicante, where they disembarked to see the sights, and also stopped at Barcelona, where for an unexplained reason they remained on board. The weather was hot and the Gulf of Lions exceedingly rough. But such a surprise awaited them at Marseilles that their discomforts were soon forgotten.

  On arriving in port someone came on board with new clothes for them all to put on, and no sooner were they dressed than who should appear but Pepita herself. She had got Max with her, then a little boy of about a year old. Pepita, evidently determined to give them all a treat, took them out to a hotel on a small islet, at a short distance from the shore, but they only remained there for two or three hours, sufficient time for a meal (these Spanish meals seem to have been habitually protracted), and then ‘we hastened our removal, for Max yelled very much, and whenever he cried Pepita was ready to die’. At dusk they all started in the train for Paris. They went in a first-class compartment, at Pepita’s expense of course, and when they got to Paris they stopped there for about four days, staying together at one of the best hotels. Pepita took them everywhere, and they passed the time seeing the sights and walking about the streets, principally the boulevards. The blind husband went everywhere with them.

  Even this did not exhaust Pepita’s kindness. When they arrived at Heidelberg, which they did in the middle of the night, they found that she had provided a furnished house for them, only a few minutes’ walk from her own. Two days later the doctor came, accompanied by one of Pepita’s servants; they could not understand a word he said, but presumed trustfully that the servant, who was a German, would understand and would report to Pepita. Each visit was to cost four dollars, and he came every four or five days for two months, but Pepita had told them not to worry as she would pay for everything. She did pay for everything, and gave them a present of 4000 reals as well. Moreover, she saw them every day and sent her own servant round with the medicines, and—what was perhaps as thrilling to Micaela as all the fine new sights she was seeing—one day she brought a foreign gentleman with her when she came to call. Micaela did not know his name, and much to her regret could not converse with him as he could not speak Spanish and she of course could speak nothing else; but she did notice that he was ‘a personage, rather tall, fair, good-looking and handsome, of a distinguished appearance, in the prime of life’. She watched Pepita and that gentleman go away together. The gentleman, she observed, took a great deal of notice of Max.

  It is pleasant to be able to record that by the time they returned to Malaga, Micaela’s husband was completely cured. They had stayed at Heidelberg for nearly a year, and had been much surprised, during their sojourn, to discover that in winter the river Neckar was frozen over. This was a phenomenon to which, as natives of the favoured south, they were not accustomed.

  III

  Shortly after this little episode, Pepita temporarily abandoned Germany to follow her lover to Turin, where he had recently been appointed secretary at the Legation.

  Really these two must either have been very extravagant or very wealthy, for although they still owned the houses at Heidelberg and Hackenfeldt, they proceeded to take Italian villas with a lavishness which is a little startling. The first villa, at Turin, was just outside the city, on the other side of the river, and Lionel Sackville-West used to walk out there in the evening when he had finished his work in the Chancery; another young Englishman, the honorary attaché, Dudley Saurin, often walked with him in that direction to within a short distance of the villa and then my grandfather would go to the right and Mr Saurin to the left. For Mr Saurin knew as well as every other member of the Legation that Pepita was a Spanish dancer and the mistress of their colleague. Even the manager of the Hotel Trombetta knew it. That was the reason why Sackville-West did not go into society like the other members of the Legation, and never called upon anybody in Turin. They knew it, because he had told them so.

  It was rather brave of him, I think, thus to flout diplomatic conventions. No one who has not lived in diplomatic society can wholly estimate the pressure of such conventions upon the willing or unwilling victim. Absurd as they may appear to the outside observer, to the inside inhabitant they are the rules and laws of his world. It takes a bold and imprudent man to defy them. It takes a man who is ready to face embarrassing situations and awkward enquiries. Of course it may, with some justice, be said of my grandfather that he was not wholly dependent upon his diplomatic profession for his success in life, but no man light-heartedly endangers his chosen career, and I can only suppose that he preferred Pepita to all worldly considerations, for during his years of
service in Turin they were constantly and very openly together. Then, Pepita expressing a preference for the Italian Lakes, they took a villa at Como, moved to another one at Arona, and finally to another one at Genoa. It was easy for my grandfather to get away from Turin, and he ‘visited her as often as his duties would permit’. She was not dancing just then, and had very little to do but to play with Max, stitch at her fancy-work, and wait for her lover’s arrival amidst those lovely surroundings. They were very much in love; I think they must have been very happy during those months.

  But curious things began then to happen. Catalina had been to stay with them at Heidelberg, and although my grandfather naïvely observes that he does not know whether she is aware of any immoral relationship between himself and Pepita, it seems unlikely that Catalina did not put two and two together as to the connexion between her lovely daughter, the distinguished foreigner and the toddling little boy. At any rate, it seems to have struck Catalina that the distinguished foreigner would make a far more suitable husband for Pepita than that poor penniless scapegrace Juan Antonio Oliva. The next step, in Catalina’s simple mind, was to get Oliva out of the way. To this end, she sent for her son Diego, and offered him ‘some thousands of dollars’ if he would go to Madrid and kill his brother-in-law. Diego did go to Madrid, and at once, but for a very different purpose than that designed by Catalina. He appeared unexpectedly in the house of Oliva’s parents, while they were all sitting down to their dinner, introduced himself, and told them of his mother’s suggestion. He was kind enough to add that he had no intention of carrying it out. He mentioned also that he had recently seen the child Maximilian in Berlin, and that he was ‘looking very handsome, quite a jewel’.

  Oliva’s brother, who was present, comments that ‘Diego’s visit made a great impression on my family and was often the topic of conversation amongst us’. Nevertheless, they were not at all convinced that Diego’s motives were as disinterested as he made them appear, and with understandable caution declined to tell him where Juan Antonio was, although they wrote off to him the moment Diego had gone. They had a shrewd idea that Diego’s apparent friendliness was due to a grudge against his mother rather than to any protective feeling for Oliva. They had observed that he was ‘in very bad condition and very poorly clad’ and also had expressed himself much incensed against his mother because she had not fulfilled her promise of sending his wife to join him. Alternately, they thought he might have repented at the last moment, or else that he had purposely misled his mother in order to get his expenses paid to Madrid. One can well imagine that Diego’s visit was ‘often a topic of conversation’ in the Oliva household.fn1

  Catalina certainly exerted a most mischievous influence over the matrimonial affairs of both her daughter and her son. Perhaps she was not altogether to blame in Diego’s case, for, as we have already learnt, he and Lola were ‘fighting always’. Indeed, from what we hear of Lola at odd moments afterwards, and from what we already know of Diego’s harum-scarum career from his school days onwards, it is quite clear that that marriage was never destined for success. I don’t know very much about Lola. She has rather a smug, mean, sly little face on the two photographs I possess of her. I know she wrote to Pepita for money, because Pepita’s reply exists, saying that she is sending as much as she can afford at the moment and is sorry she cannot send more as she is expecting a baby. I know also that at one time she was living with ‘a man who was certainly not Diego’ in Madrid in the Calle Jesus Maria, engaged in a wine-skin business with an inscription on the front of the shop, Boteria de Ignacio Rojo. After that she kept a stall in a cheap market, where she sold such things as ‘umbrellas, articles of clothing, etc., either second-hand or collected from pawnbrokers’. This is all I know about Lola, until such time as she went to stay with Pepita. My mother remembered her staying there; she remembered being told to call her Aunt Lola. Diego used to go and stay with Pepita too, he was lame; my mother remembered him also. Evidently Pepita was never disloyal even towards the more disreputable of her relations. I wonder what Lionel Sackville-West, with his very correct upbringing and his English background, made of them? The situation must have been further complicated by the fact that Diego could speak only a few words of French, and Lionel Sackville-West not a word of Spanish. Diego and Pepita always spoke Spanish together; my grandfather must sometimes have felt rather out of it. He and Pepita spoke French together; she with a strong Spanish accent, and he, presumably, with an English. Their children spoke nothing but French.

  LOLA AND HER CHILD

  IV

  They all led a queer muddled life during those years from 1860 to 1866/67. In order to follow their movements at all consecutively, one has to dart about all over Spain and most of Europe. There is Catalina living at Buena Vista with occasional visits to Germany; Diego in Madrid, warning Oliva’s parents of Oliva’s proposed assassination; Lola selling wine-skins in a shop and umbrellas and second-hand clothing in the market, meanwhile living with another man; my grandfather taking Italian villas for his mistress, a flat in Paris, a flat at Bordeaux, and a villa at Arcachon; Pepita herself bearing successive children, and becoming in a way of her own more and more domesticated and respectable. And there is Oliva.

  Oliva during this time in spite of or perhaps because of his thwarted love for Pepita, became revengeful. He had had a great deal to endure, and on the whole he had endured it all with commendable fortitude, dignity, and patience. He had resolutely refused to discuss the early wreckage of his marriage either with his family or his friends; he had merely stated the fact, leaving them to understand that although he did not want to enter into details, he preferred on the whole to put the blame on Pepita’s mother rather than on Pepita. In all this he behaved very well. He had behaved well, again, in allowing himself to be persuaded into a reconciliation with his mother-in-law on the understanding that his wife would shortly be restored to him. Here again he had been deceived, and had every reason to suspect that his mother-in-law had once more made mischief for reasons best known to herself. Ample confirmation of this suspicion had then arrived with the news from home that his mother-in-law was doing her best to arrange for his assassination.

  I for one cannot blame Oliva for the apparently spiteful steps which he then took. He knew that Catalina was living in luxury at Pepita’s expense, while he himself was leading a precarious existence spending every penny he got the moment he earned it. He had to accept any job he could get, whether it was dancing in provincial towns or bull-fighting at Antequera. On first hearing of Pepita’s liaison with Lionel Sackville-West he had entered into such a rage that he had made himself ill for three or four days, and had taken the extreme step of consulting a lawyer with a view of annulling his marriage. Here again the lack of money defeated him, for he was warned that it would be a long and expensive business, and, as he pathetically told his parents, he needed every dollar he could save to keep himself supplied with costumes for the theatre. It was a hard life. Not for him were the comfortable house, the gardens, the vineyards, the stable full of horses at Buena Vista. But there was still the shell of the house at Albolote, and Oliva resolved to take what benefit he could out of the former splendours so contemptuously deserted by Pepita and her family.

  As Pepita’s husband, he established his right to what remained of the property, and, armed with the necessary papers, presented himself at the house of Manuel Gonzalez, who had been left in charge of the lamentable ruin. In fact, he had written to Pepita for a power of attorney, and she, in her casual easy-going way, let him have it. Oliva was much disgusted to find the condition the house was in; he angrily asked Gonzalez under what authority the family had thus despoiled it, adding that they had left him very little to remove but that he was fully determined to remove that little. He added that he considered he had every right to do as he chose, since Pepita had caused her son to be christened in his name. (This was poor innocent little Max, who had no choice in the matter.)

  It was not very easy for Oliva to
carry out his schemes, for at that time he was not only primo mimo (first dancer) himself but was also Director of the ballet in Granada, and had to go backwards and forwards to Albolote between the rehearsals and the performances. His companions in the troupe remembered him asking for leave to go when the rehearsal had lasted longer than usual, as he had to be back for the performance in the evening. The rehearsal used generally to be over by about eleven in the morning, and the evening performance began at half-past seven. Nevertheless he managed the matter quite well, and soon became a familiar figure at Albolote, where Pepita’s old friends would point him out to one another as the husband of their Star of Andalusia. Juan Arantave, for instance, first met him in a shop where he (Arantave) was asking the shop-keeper to change a gold coin for him. Spaniards notoriously have a very acute sense of the value and importance of money, and as the shop-keeper had some doubt as to the genuineness of the coin, he called to Oliva, who was standing by, to come and give his opinion. After this, Arantave saw Oliva quite often and they used to salute each other politely when they met in the street. He even went on one occasion to load a cart with some tiles Oliva had sold to his father. His father was present, and paid cash for the tiles on the spot. His brother Antonio, the same who had watched Pepita with such delight trying to catch the goldfish in his garden, was actually employed by Oliva in the labour of pulling down the house. Oliva directed all these operations himself, standing in the Plaza while the idle portion of the population stood round watching with great interest and amusement. They certainly had had their full meed of entertainment out of the Casa Blanca, ever since Catalina had first settled in Albolote.