Only Sofia-Elisabete

by Robin Kobayashi

  “A most satisfying ending,” cried Mr. Hopper, tearfully. He fumbled with a handkerchief to blow his nose.

  “Señoritos, I shall tell you something that I’ve told no other living being,” said Tito, drying his own eyes.

  They eagerly leaned forward to listen.

  “The reason I acknowledged Doña Marisa as my daughter was because of her great beauty. If she had been a real fright, with a crooked nose, and hump-backed, I would have told her to return to Sevilla and to let me alone!”

  “Tito, what a terrible thing to say.” Oh, my waggish grandfather.

  “Heh, heh,” was his mischievous reply.

  “I beg you, Señorito Horatio, do not write that down. My grandfather is funning you.”

  “Ah, here comes Zia and the magic oranges.” Tito rubbed his palms together.

  Zia glided into the patio, carrying a platter of fruit atop her head. Each orange had been peeled and the segments drizzled with a goodly amount of Spanish honey, a heavy, dark, aromatic honey from the marshy lowlands where the bees feast on lavender and sea thistle. Once our guests were served, Tito popped a segment of an orange into his mouth.

  “Very good, very juicy.” He wiped his mouth with his handkerchief. “María santísima!”

  “What’s the matter, Tito?”

  Speechless, he stuck out his tongue, atop of which a perfect orange diamond presented itself.

  “It’s a diamond!” I plucked it from him. “Tito, these really are magic oranges.”

  Our guests each ate another segment of an orange, but no diamonds were to be had.

  “Perhaps you are unlucky, señoritos.” Tito assumed a tragic air.

  Undaunted, Mr. Munro tried again, taking great care to select a segment. He chewed thoughtfully for several seconds. Excited of a sudden, he pointed to the silver coin on his tongue.

  Tito raised a brow. “A real came from the orange?”

  Mr. Munro tossed the coin high into the air.

  “Heads!” cried I, with mirth.

  “Heads, it is,” and he gave me the real to inspect, laughing merrily at his trick.

  “Ferdin VII Dei Gratia—Ferdinand VII By the Grace of God,” I translated the inscription on the coin.

  “Your Latin is excellent,” remarked Mr. Munro.

  “Oh yes, I began to speak Latin at the age of two, when I lived in a convent.”

  “Two?”

  “She is a genius, always studying and reading Galignani’s Messenger and Literary Gazette and other newspapers from France and Portugal whenever she visits,” Tito boasted to our guests.

  “Oh, Tito, how could I not want to read about the revolutions in Spain and Portugal?”

  Tito groaned. “You were ten years old in the year 1820 and wild for General Riego and his liberal officers, shouting ‘Viva la Constitución!’ from the balcony and tossing red roses to those insurgents.”

  “La libertad!” I responded with my rebel cry. “Freedom, equality, no censorship, no Inquisition.”

  Tito waved me off as if I were deluded. “I have told you a thousand times. Each of the kingdoms of Spain are made up of proud and fiercely independent people, making this the most difficult country to govern. Only an absolute monarchy will do.”

  “Even a bad one led by a ruthless ignoramus?” I challenged him.

  Suddenly, a volley of manly epithets erupted from the floor above, breaking into our conversation.

  Tito clutched his forehead in mock vexation. “Did you leave Don Fulano in the spare room?”

  “I might have done, Tito.” We both knew that Pinto hated the serpent more than Felipa did.

  “Then, you know how you must act,” said he, suppressing a smile.

  “Oh yes, Tito.” I laughed inwardly, knowing that he wished Pinto gone. As usual, he expected me to carry out his demands somehow. “You must learn to out-trick that trickster Pinto,” he would always instruct me when, on prior visits, I had failed in my mission to rid us of the sponger who ate Tito’s magic oranges.

  I rushed back downstairs after helping the servant to rescue Don Fulano from Pinto. That was when I heard Emmerence’s refined laugh. Peeking from behind a column, I observed the ease with which Mr. Munro conversed with her, and I believed them in love. How could he not adore her and her big brown eyes? How could he not appreciate her graceful manners and eloquence and high intelligence? They were the same age, were they not?

  “There is no one like her in the wide world,” Emmerence declared with pride. “Isn’t that right, Zia? Sofia is a very charming and clever young lady.”

  Zia nodded and smiled. I hadn’t noticed her there, feeding more flowers to her plump grasshoppers. But she had seen me.

  “She is enchanting,” remarked Mr. Munro.

  Emmerence added, “Even as a small child, she was witty and talented.”

  He asked, “How long have you been her governess?”

  “Her uncle hired me when she was twelve years old. He said to me, ‘You must break her unruly spirit,’ as though I were a horse-tamer.”

  “And what is your success?” He grinned.

  “She is everything good and proper.” Emmerence then sighed. “But her mother encourages her in certain Spanish customs if you understand my meaning.”

  “Hmm,” and he stroked his chin. “Spanish women walk très bien—very well, indeed.”

  “Trop bien—too well,” she corrected him, with a disapproving look. She thought the graceful swimming gait of a Spanish woman too excessive. In her mind, walking had a single purpose, namely, to get you from one place to another, and thus one should simply walk and get it done instead of spending so much time thinking about how to do it.

  He nodded in polite agreement. “It must be a challenge for you, working in Spain.”

  “I worry that I’ve not done enough.”

  “My mother used to say the same thing about Margaret, my younger sister. Yet, in Glasgow, my sister has gone from a schoolgirl to a respectable young lady. You would never have known that she was once a tomboy.”

  “I can’t believe it—a tomboy?”

  “Oh, aye. In her girlhood, she wished to do everything with her older brothers—climbing trees, sliding on ice, whipping a top, playing at marbles. My mother quite despaired of her, just as she did of us boys and our pranks and wanton freaks.”

  They laughed genially together.

  “So, Miss Odet, fear not. A child we all once were.”

  A child! Did he consider me one?

  A black mood seized me, and I left them, to run up the staircase to the roof-top, where my troubled heart and I could hide. It was no use star-gazing tonight. Clusters of silver stars instantly dissolved into the gloom of the night sky. I had been scowling at the darkness for some time, resentful at the stars that had deserted me, when I heard Emmerence’s light footfall. She set down her lanthorn.

  “Why did you not come down to say good-night? It was impolite of you.”

  My emotions in a whirl, I blurted out, “Emmerence, are you in love with Mr. Munro?”

  “My dear girl, I am contemplating entering a convent.”

  “You are?” She had never mentioned this to me before.

  Her response struck me with panic for some reason, and I clung to her, my steadfast friend. But I sensed the misery in her long sorrowful sigh. Being a governess was not her destiny. Poor Emmerence—she was as much an exile as I.

  “How selfish of me to want you for myself. How selfish of me not to think of your happiness and well-being. I am sorry for it, Emmerence.”

  “Listen, now.” She mustered up a sad smile. “You will find the best man to love and to care for you, someone with the good sense and kind nature of a Mr. Munro. He is certainly gentlemanlike, well-learned, very sincere and so handsome.”

  “He is quite amiable,” and having said that, my heart ached, because I hadn’t met with politeness and good manners in a long time from someone newly acquainted to me. “Alas, the perfect Mr. Munros of this world care nothing
for me. To them, I’m still a silly impertinent child.”

  “This Mr. Munro certainly asked many a question about you. He said you’re enchanting.”

  “Pooh, nonsense. No respectable young man from England or Scotland would really think that. My love story will be an unbelievable tale, not an impossible one. It’s my fate.”

  That night, tucked in bed, I searched my mind about the possibility of the impossible falling impossibly in love with me, but nothing could convince me otherwise. An impossible love was just that. The sad truth was, despite it all, I still liked the impossible, this Scotsman, more than I dare say he liked me. The red beads curled round my neck, so cold to the touch, forewarned of an unhappy love where love was one-sided. Better to have a warm love than an icy one, freezing up your heart, because you would surely catch your death otherwise.

  4. Salada

  “I knew how it would be.” My companion, Don Fulano, flicked his forked tongue in agreement. Half-hidden in our cupolaed watch-tower, I had been searching through the crowd in the plaza, with the aid of a pocket spyglass, keen to see my impossible. There he was—Kitt Munro—walking at a proper distance behind Madelina Lucena and her brother as they took a turn about the square. She, the celebrated belle of Cádiz at sixteen years of age, had the fairest of complexions, the warmest of eyes, the gentlest of dispositions.

  One could often observe her followed by a string of admirers in the plaza. Her white lace mantilla always stood out in a landscape of Spanish black. Everyone knew her white lace veil. Everyone knew that Ramón Lara, a gambler and a quarrelsome fellow, had asked for her hand in marriage, but her father had rejected him with contempt. Everyone knew Lara seethed with vengeance, because he wore a furious brow to remind you of it, even during Mass.

  My own rejection pained me. Mr. Munro had already forgotten who I was—he having been lured by Madelina and her undeniable Spanish charm. Beauty and gentle manners are best paired with the same, are they not? They strolled onto a well-known street frequented by fashionable people. This Calle Ancha had the best shops in the city—the glovers, the perfumeries, the confectioneries—and none of those open-air shops that sold cheap powder-horns and castanets and tin fans along with relics and rosaries.

  Don Fulano hissed.

  “Exactly!” I told the wise serpent. “If I am so enchanting, why, then, has he become enchanted with another so soon?”

  I was contemplating this when a pale young woman, with a prim and precise bearing, strode through the plaza, her coral rosary dangling from her wrist, her black mantilla flowing about her. She came to an abrupt halt, to remove a letter from her pocket, whereupon she sniffed it as if to inhale its contents. Looking round to see whether anyone had been watching her, she put away her letter. Her dejected air made me feel sorry for her.

  “Oh, Emmerence, what are you about?”

  Don Fulano hissed again.

  She prayed at church three times a day. Was it to read her letter in private? Two people wrote to her, from what I knew—one being Padre Pozzi, her spiritual advisor in Genoa, the other being Lord Scapeton, her employer in London (and soon Madrid).

  A suspicion half-formed in my mind that she held a tendre for his lordship. Had they not been thrown together for a month, traveling with his intellectual coterie, when he had hired her to be my governess? Poor Emmerence—hers was truly an impossible love, given their different stations in life and my uncle’s superior attitude. As such, there would never be a declaration of love or anything else from him.

  Is this why she wished to serve God the rest of her days?

  Her hopeless situation reminded me of my own, pining for someone who didn’t pine for me. It was then I realized that I hadn’t pined this morning for Antonio; in fact, I hadn’t pined for him at all since I had met Mr. Munro. How had I become such a pathetic giddy-brained creature? I began to brood.

  Siesta time came, and the oppressive deep silence in the house plunged me into despair. In my restless state, I wandered up to the roof-top. The servant’s laundry—short trousers, white shirt, red sash, bright kerchief—flitted there in the sea-breeze. How unassuming they were, these men’s clothes, but what freedom came from wearing them. Inspiration seized me, and I snatched the laundry from the clothes-line, along with a felt turban hat and rope sandals that lay nearby.

  My bundle of things secured in my arms, I crept down to Tito’s laboratory, a place of hushed secrets with a sign on the door that read “no entre,” and thus, no one, except for Zia, had ever been in there. Finding the door ajar, I took this as a good omen, and I quietly let myself in. Obey the impulse of burning curiosity I must, even if I would catch it later on for my disobedience.

  Inside, I discovered a cabinet of curiosities—stuffed birds, preserved fishes, tortoise shells, snake-skins, skeletons big and small. Above me an imperial eagle, its wings spread, hung suspended from the ceiling. Its brown eyes watched me. Gaping at these fantastical things, I stumbled onto a pile of something on the floor. Cramped inside the room were stacks of old newspapers, the Correo de Cádiz, and barrels of rawhide, wool, horns and dried beef. The thought that Tito might be smuggling goods made me laugh (a contrabandista he was not!), and I quickly put it out of my mind. Another barrel, partially opened, contained Tito’s hoard of sweetmeats—dried love-apples, peaches, bergamot-pears, dates, quinces, figs, citrons—and I helped myself to them.

  On a large table in the center of the room lay a microscope, a counting board, a scattering of coins, a jar of cocoa-nut oil, a box of toothpowder, with three worn toothbrushes atop it, and numerous flasks containing chemicals or powders. And along one wall, crowded on the bookshelves, sat dozens of ledgers arranged by year. They seemed to be written in a strange code punctuated with inverted exclamation points. Turning page after page of one of these ledgers, I felt as though I were gazing into Tito’s brain, a jumble of bizarre facts, disturbing figures and tempestuous thoughts.

  The solemn ticking of an ancient clock nearby reminded me of my purpose. Tossing my shawl and other clothes to the ground, I changed into my disguise. A servant-boy I became, with a kerchief tied on my head, and over that, the felt turban hat. Next came my thievery—stuffing sweetmeats and cuartos into the folds of my sash. Then came the trick, to crawl through the window undetected.

  No one saw me. The street was desolate. La libertad!

  Though the afternoon sun was agreeably warm, the city still became deserted for several hours at this time of day. No Andaluz would ever give up his sacred right to a siesta, even in the best of weather. And so, I came and went as I pleased, with no one to bother me. On every street, the curtains on the balconies of houses swelled like sails. “La sombra! La sombra!” Felipa’s scolding voice echoed in my brain, to remind me to walk in the sombra, the shade created from the houses constructed so close together on narrow streets.

  On this my great escape, I rambled to the Alameda, a promenade with elms and poplars near the bay. A fresh sea-zephyr greeted me. There is nothing so inconstant as the sea with its rolling waves, its merchantmen and boats and fishing-smacks crisscrossing the bay. A small party of swallows darted past me, to skim over the waters in search of food, and I was sorry to see them go because they were my only companions.

  To cheer myself, I ate my sweetmeats until only the love-apples remained, those wrinkled dried-up tomatoes. How I longed for a loaf of bread, to scoop a small hole in it for oil, and to dip the pieces of bread and love-apples into it. The thought of this made me very thirsty. None of the water-sellers were to be found here, on the Alameda. Eventually I found them at the place where they took their siesta, heaped on the cool stones in the shade of a fountain.

  I tapped the arm of an idle water-seller. “Agua fresca, por favor.”

  The man continued to snore, ignoring my plea for fresh water.

  “Tengo sed.” I shook him. “I’m thirsty!”

  Grumbling an epithet, he guarded his water cask and tin cup. Another water-seller bestirred himself, only to discover that someo
ne had stabbed his cask to let the water escape.

  “You dog!” He kicked the water-seller guarding his cask.

  That man gave him the fig. “Manolo, did you water yourself again?”

  “I’ll tear your heart out and make pudding of your liver!”

  Manolo whipped out his navaja, and if not for my frantic scream, he would have given that rogue his knife. The other water-seller drew out his weapon. Soon, the rest of the water-sellers awakened, to lay bets on whose heart would be torn out in this knife-fight. A great commotion ensued, and more fights broke out amongst the other water-sellers because, apparently, no one, not even a poor water-seller, is to be trusted—imagined threats are real, past slights must be avenged. What a rumpus!

  A blare of trumpets summoned the soldiers. The water-sellers hoisted their casks and they hurtled about to elude capture. Struck with panic, I dashed away, getting myself lost. How long I wandered in the mazy streets, I don’t know. If only the tops of the twin towers of the church had presented themselves to me, I could have aimed for the plaza and Tito’s house that lay hidden from view. But the houses surrounding me were too tall, and the streets so narrow, making it useless to search the slivers of sky overhead. I began to despair of finding my way home before the siesta ended.

  It was then, on one of the many narrowly-paved alleys, that I observed Pinto, with a foxy gleam in his eye, speaking with the one-toothed bandit chief and paying for some Havannas most likely stolen. Pinto had money—that lying rascal. He had written to Don Rafael the other day, begging him to send more money because the bandits had robbed him of every single real. I wondered how much Pinto had stolen from Don Rafael over the years by paying off the bandits with only part of the money given to him. A shabby trick!

  I had gone down another street to dodge Pinto, when I encountered a paunchy Gaditano, with a square head and baggy eyes and a jaw clean-shaven days ago. He lolled against a wall, chewing on his cigar. As I neared him, he leered at my breasts, which, I just realized, were bouncing north and south because, in my haste to explore the city, I had forgotten to bind up my chest. This ruffian, with his cigar tucked away in the corner of his mouth, lunged at me, to squeeze me with his leathery paws.