Only Sofia-Elisabete

by Robin Kobayashi

  Towards evening, a light shower fell, and then it rained blood for six days and six nights, a strange and freakish occurrence, to be sure. The pipes on the roof-top for collecting rain-water groaned from the gush of reddish water that descended into the subterraneous cistern. The patio flooded, as did Tito’s laboratory. Leaves of the dragon tree wilted. Soggy blossoms snapped from branches and drowned.

  I must have wept a thousand tears in my melancholy state; I know I scarcely slept or ate during the deluge. To make matters worse, my head throbbed, my stomach cramped, my body ached, making me completely indisposed. Zia prepared an infusion of ruda and manzanilla, which I drank down.

  Soon afterwards, I became lethargic and feverish, and Tito feared that I had been struck with the evil eye. Zia knew what ailed me. She said I suffered from lovesickness and the evil eye, a deadly combination; and, it now being Tuesday, one of the best days for cures, she applied poultices of frogs and chickens to my body, and then she smoked me with a mixture of cañas de San Juan, hierba del mal de ojo, three olive leaves, three grains of rough salt and three drops of oil.

  Still not satisfied, despite my fever having subsided, she burned sticks of dragon’s blood incense, their sharp earthy odor penetrating the entire house. She wrote the name “Kitt Munro” with this dark-red resin onto a piece of paper. She chanted prayers, invoking San Nicolás, invoking the sun and the moon and the stars, all in the hope that Mr. Munro would return to me. But it was no use; the opportunity was lost. As the saying goes, “the swallow has fled.” And my swallow had vanished.

  PART TWO:

  Madrid & Beyond

  Summer 1825

  Principal Persons & Creatures

  In Madrid

  Lord Scapeton, my uncle

  Don Fausto de Bobadilla, an old nobleman

  Teresa Blanco, a confectioner’s daughter

  In Aragón

  Jean-Pierre Tessier, a newspaper reporter

  Luis Candelas, a bandit

  Fray Nicolás de Santa María, an itinerant friar

  Ci-ci, a swallow

  Raya, a donkey

  In Bordeaux

  Francisco de Goya, an artist

  Leandro Fernández de Moratín, a poet and dramatist

  6. Solano

  Mid-June, the levanter known as the solano exhaled its hot dusty breath into Cádiz and over the plains of Andalucía. A heavy stillness pervaded the atmosphere. The sky presented chalky; the sun was distorted by a weird haze. Birds dropped in flight. Fish teemed at the water’s surface, the sea inconceivably warm and smooth as a lake. Every living thing suffered through the solano. Even Don Fulano disappeared, wholly wretched and comfortless, nowhere to be found. Zia soon despaired of her chirp-less grasshoppers.

  Then the flies came for dinner. Tito murdered the insects one by one.

  “Olé!” I cheered him. “You’re quicker than a fly.”

  “Where is Emmerence? Will she not dine with us and the flies?”

  I slapped away the pests. “She said the heat is melting her brain.”

  Gil Lucena, a frequent guest these last six days, joined us presently. How very odd it was. We never invited friends to dinner. A fussy eater, Lucena poked at his food as though nothing Zia served met his approval. This time, a vengeful Zia made the sausages doubly hot. And Lucena, surprising everyone, devoured the fiery sausages spiced with garlic, anise, paprika and cloves, without taking any water. The solano had given him a voluptuous appetite.

  “Eat, eat, for your health,” Tito urged me.

  “My dear grandfather, you needn’t fret about me any longer. I shan’t want another novio as long as I live and breathe.”

  A goblet of sherry would dull my love pangs. This amber elixir ensured me a peaceful siesta, one where my secret yearnings and passions about you-know-who stopped plaguing me. Oh, Mr. Munro! Seized with another fit of the dismals, I drank down the sherry in one long gulp while Lucena studied me.

  “You must sip an Amontillado to appreciate its aroma of hazelnut and herbs.”

  “Ah, sí, Señorito Lucena—”

  “Gil—call me Gil.” Sweat dripped onto his lips.

  I let loose a trio of nervous hiccups, one right after another. Tito despaired of me and my poor manners, even though I begged a thousand pardons. Lucena continued to stare and drip.

  Tito spoke up, to thank our honored guest for inquiring each day about my health (“Such kindness!”). He praised Lucena’s integrity and honor (“Such virtue!”), his vigor and health (“Such a young bull!”), and his good looks and charm (“Such manliness!”). The truth was, the man had become rather wild-looking and sweaty from those spicy sausages he had eaten. He attracted a troop of flies.

  “Did you not tell me the other day how handsome he is?” Tito put the words into my mouth, the words that he wanted me to say and believe.

  “Oh, indeed,” I lied out of politeness.

  Lucena, a reserved and dignified man, about eight and twenty, was of medium height and clean-shaven. But he wasn’t half as handsome as Mr. Munro. Suspicious hazel eyes offset his otherwise insipid features.

  Tito told him, “My granddaughter is immensely flattered by your attentions.”

  Lucena puffed himself up.

  I gaped at my suitor, bewildered that these dinners meant courtship. Lucena was all dull edges and bleak scowls, completely sin sal—without salt, without personality. What could such a dour man want with me and my charming eccentricities? Mr. Munro, though outwardly reserved, could be passionate. The proof had been in his kisses, in the way he danced, in his quest for adventure.

  “She is a mixture of piety and youthful poetic fancies,” Tito cautioned him.

  “I will cure her of the latter,” Lucena boasted with confidence.

  Tito broke out into an amiable laugh. I thought it a good joke, so I laughed along with him. Meanwhile, Lucena sat there in a serious frame of mind, the flies buzzing round him.

  It was then that Tito encouraged our union, declaring it an excellent match. Seeing my startled expression, he reasoned with me that Lucena, the eldest son of a respectable family, was a devout and honest man.

  “Comfort and wealth, a country-house in Chiclana, sojourns in Marseille—these things Señorito Lucena can give you and much more.”

  Ah! A prudential marriage where there isn’t a positive aversion to the other person. I had read about this kind of thing in novels. The heroines of those stories always regretted their choices in the end, and they pined away for their lost loves, who, more often than not, came back into their lives, just to make them more miserable, even demented. Piners. Regretters. Need I join their ranks?

  With Spanish frankness, I told my suitor, “I thank you for the honor of your visit, Señorito Gil, but … the truth is … I am too independent to be a good wife.”

  “As your husband, I will cure you of your faults,” he loftily replied.

  “Oh? How would you do that?”

  He gazed at me with hot eyes. “You, my domestic angel, will be preoccupied with and live for nothing else except me and raising our two dozen children.”

  “Two dozen!” The thought of doing unspeakable married-people things with him made my cheeks burn. Was this my destiny, my true path in life, to have a child each year until I collapsed? A strange, nervous, queasy feeling struck me.

  “God willing.” He crossed himself, punctuating it with a kiss of his fingers.

  “God willing,” repeated Tito, who wanted great-grand-babies.

  A proverb dropped into my mind, the one where the mother explains to her daughter that marriage is “to sew, to bear children and to weep.” I hadn’t thought much on it before, or even at all, of how much suffering, weariness and heartbreak a married woman must endure. Alarmed by this, I thought it best to unleash my saucy self, to scare off my unwanted suitor.

  “Señorito Gil, what think you of the Constitution?”

  “Cállete …” Tito tried to hush me.

  “Preposterous,” muttered Luc
ena.

  How could a modern man of business scorn the Constitution that would have delivered us from despotism, tyranny and ignorance?

  I persisted with, “Did you not support the liberals?”

  “They do not respect the church and the king.”

  I raised a defiant brow. “I still support them and the Constitution. How will you cure me of that?”

  My suitor sat there, wide-mouthed. “Cure! There’s only one cure. You must undergo purification.”

  I saw how it was. I would be made to swallow his ideas one by one until I had none of my own. I would be made to quash my revolutionary pathos. I would be made to obey my husband.

  Lucena, too, saw how it was. Clearly, we would not suit. It was all a mistake. Clutching his stomach, he groaned like a dying bull. The man had overeaten himself. And now, his bowels were on fire! Not waiting for our dessert of cool green figs, he muttered that he must take his leave.

  Zia happily showed him and the flies the door.

  “There goes a decent match,” lamented Tito, who wished for me to be settled near him. “He would have cured you of your liberal delusions and headstrong tendencies.”

  “My dear Tito, no man will cure me of being me.”

  “I thought you wanted to be married. Zia made you love potions.”

  “But they didn’t work. It seems that … marriage may not be part of my true path.”

  “Your what?”

  “My true path. I must find it.”

  “Poor Gil Lucena. You’ve dashed his path.”

  “I think he would rather marry a donkey than a liberal.”

  Tito growled out, “You must never speak of the Constitution again. The ultra-royalists have murdered hundreds, possibly thousands, of liberals and others connected to them. Even the youths of good families were killed—a hundred of them flung off a precipice.”

  “I know, I know—you’ve told me.” I didn’t want to hear that story again.

  He went on still, “Those that weren’t murdered were either hanged or given the garrote,” and then he repeated what happened to those who, like my liberal heroes, were hanged—the executioner mounting the prisoner’s shoulders, the two helpers pulling the prisoner’s legs to hasten strangulation, the prisoner soiling himself in public view.

  A renewed fear of violent death brought terror to my heart. Could Gil Lucena be trusted? Had I endangered Tito and myself with my careless words? A punishing wave of heat, like the blast of a thousand furnaces, swept through the house just then, as though to warn me of my imprudence.

  “It’s the proverbial ill wind that blows no good,” grumbled Tito, wiping the sweat from his shiny bald head.

  Not long after Lucena’s disturbing visit, Doña Marisa summoned me home. As usual, I had half-expected her to forget about me, at least until the autumn when, ready to spend her pin money at Calle Ancha, she would surprise us with a visit. Tertulias would be held in her honor. Tito would escort her to the theater. Zia would make her all kinds of potions, including lady’s potions—the antidote to her headaches, the biggest headache being Don Rafael.

  Cádiz, for me, was the perfect antidote to my stepfather. But now, return to Sevilla we must since my mother’s message was urgent. We would go from the frying-pan to the fire, as they say—inland being much hotter during a solano. Emmerence almost cried at the thought.

  I cried outright. I would rather stay with Tito than be anywhere near my violent stepfather again.

  But Tito thought it best for me to leave now, given that Lucena was friends with the governor of Cádiz, a staunch royalist. He secured my promise that I would come back for a visit, once I had married on my true path, to fill his house with great-grand-babies and to make him the happiest great-grandfather in Cádiz.

  “Did I not say there’s an ill wind? What is unlucky for me, brings fortune to another—your mamá.” With tears in his eyes, he pressed a pouch of coins into my hand, along with a package of his treasured sweetmeats. And that was the last time I saw Tito, who retreated to his laboratory, grieving at the loss of his princesita, as he said. I nearly choked on my sobs.

  Zia kissed me, one wet cheek after another. “Do not forget your note-book on potions,” she told me. Ordinarily, I left it here, to keep it safe from Don Rafael the Book Burner. But she insisted I take it, along with some love potions. “By the way”—she winked—“I believe Don Fulano is asking for you.”

  Determined to find the serpent’s hiding place so that I could say good-bye, I eventually found him coiled next to the subterraneous cistern. Listless, he slowly stuck out his forked tongue thrice, which, in reptilianese, means “vaya … con … Dios-s-s.”

  Above us, the heavy thuds of packing commenced, followed by the loud complaints of Felipa, who, being naturally slothful, dreaded any type of movement during a solano. Towards evening we were rowed to Port St. Mary and, the following day, we braved no man’s land to reach Sanlúcar. Camels from Africa roamed the sand-hills there. But the hump-backed beasts frightened the superstitious peasants. Like me, those wild camels lived in exile.

  Aboard the steam-boat the morning next, I consumed all of my sweetmeats. The solano had made me uncommonly hungry. Soon I felt sickish. Emmerence couldn’t eat. She couldn’t think. My friend sank into torpor—she, who had once been a cloud-dweller in the snowy Swiss Alps. Of all of us, she suffered the most from the solano.

  It was late afternoon when we finally arrived at our crumbling abode. As we shuffled towards the opened gate, I happened to notice that the family crest had been removed. Where had it gone? And how was it that the patio and corridors were unswept, the flowers wilted, the hedges overgrown? No one came to greet us in our shabby residence.

  “Holloa! Anyone here?” I called out.

  In a flurry, Felipa darted towards the saloon. She pulled open the glass-paned double doors.

  “María santísima!”

  The once-elegant room had been stripped of its crimson-damask furniture and candelabras and mirrors. We hurried to the study. It, too, stood empty, save for one thing. Don Rafael’s prized desk remained—but no longer paired with a bull’s head mounted on the wall.

  We then dashed from room to room on the ground floor. The crucifixes had been removed. At least the servants had brought down our trestle beds and woolen mattresses from the first story above, in time for the summer season. Missing, however, were my harp, books, rush-bottom chair and writing-desk with crooked legs.

  “I’m starving, really starving,” Pinto whined out.

  “Tonto!” Felipa slapped his head. “How can you be thinking of food?”

  But hunger ruled for him. He led the way through a door at the far end of the patio, marching off to the one place he loved to frequent—the outer patio and the small buildings there.

  Inside the kitchen sat old toothless Pepita, picking her nose, a constant habit of hers. She must have been seventy-five years old. With the familiarity of a Spanish servant, she demanded of us, “Oye! Listen!” She lisped out that the servants had been dismissed without any wages. Don Rafael and Javier had removed to the countryside to live with Doña Lucía. Doña Marisa had been a guest at Don Pepe’s country-house, but she had left him and gone away, nobody knew whither.

  Then came the biggest shock. Our home had been let to the Beauchamps, who would take possession of it in a fortnight. We clamored all at once, “No! The English merchant and his wife? How can that be?” Pepita grumbled that Don Rafael had suffered a monstrous loss at the gaming tables, and that was why. Once those ingleses arrived, she would be homeless. She would rather live in beggary than with those who were not Catholic. A bigot she was.

  “What shall we do, Emmerence?” I fretted at the thought of becoming Mrs. Beauchamp’s house-drudge.

  “There is nothing for it but to await Doña Marisa,” she replied wearily.

  That evening, I heard Pinto complain to Felipa that they must walk the eight miles to Dos Hermanos, where lived his old mother, a fruit-seller. The two rascals sto
le off during the night, without a word, without a proper good-bye, taking with them every edible thing from the kitchen. Only a jar of olives sat on a shelf, forgotten.

  Felipa had been my dueña for six years, and her abandonment and betrayal of duty half-astounded, half-infuriated me, never mind that I was glad to be rid of her and Pinto. Our one remaining servant, Old Pepita, cursed the thieving duo to the skies. In a huff, she gathered her small bundle of things and she scuttled off, a surprising sight to be sure, given that she claimed to suffer from the rheumatiz.

  Emmerence and I remained alone now, without any servants or food or protection. To hide my unease at our situation, I became obstinate or, should I say, more obstinate than usual. When that happened, ridiculous things dropped out of my mouth.

  “I wish to be served. Where is my cup of chocolate? I must have it.”

  “Eat some olives.” She thrust the jar into my hand.

  It being market-day, we set off with our baskets to the nearest plaza where the fish-mongers sold salted sardines and the gypsies made buñuelos, the snake-shaped cakes fried in oil. Oh! How I wished for a fritter cake. Heaps of produce were piled up on the ground—garlands of fiery red peppers, mounds of chick-peas, regal-red cherries, vulgar onions, deep-green melons, prickly-pear fruits.

  We pooled our cuartos for bread delivered fresh from Alcalá. A man with a friendly goat sold us milk, and then we filled our baskets with chorizo from the sausage-man, oranges from the fruit-seller and a dozen eggs from the egg-girl. Later, at home, we hailed a water-seller to fill three of our large water jars. And, after that, we bought coal from the coal-seller and oil from the oil-seller. Still, something was missing.

  “Pray let us get a cake of chocolate at the provision-shop.”

  “O fie!” Emmerence scowled. “Potatoes are more practical. I survived on them in Switzerland.”

  “This isn’t”—I belched loudly—“Switzerland.”

  “That was undignified.” And she, the proud Swiss, didn’t speak to me for hours, thinking I had done the belch on purpose. How could I confess that I had secretly devoured a greasy fritter cake, knowing that it would give me indigestion?