I, Sofia-Elisabete, Love Child of Colonel Fitzwilliam

by Robin Kobayashi

  ‘Where are the cows?’ I rubbed my sleepy eyes.

  ‘It would appear that Spiegel, Falth, Lusti and their compatriots have over-slept themselves.’ With a smug grin, Señor Gonzalez glanced out the carriage window.

  ‘Ay! What have you done?’ Doña Marisa chided her cortejo.

  Señor Gonzalez straightened his jacket. ‘You see before you now the proud owner of an alphorn, having cozened it from the shepherd yesterday.’

  As we neared Saint Sebastian, the tolling of the bells made a doleful sound, as if in mourning for poor Emmerence, whose destiny would be a life of poverty and loneliness here in Brieg. I puzzled my wits together, when I seized upon a brilliant idea to save Emmerence.

  ‘Minha Senhora, may Emmerence be a guide and come with us to a moon? She’s a pony-glot and speaks Italian…and French…and all sorts of things.’

  Doña Marisa gave a start. ‘The pretty orphan girl can speak Italian? Sí, sí – now I remember.’

  ‘Mi amor,’ pleaded Señor Gonzalez, ‘we do not have the room, nor can we accommodate the extra weight in the servants’ calash. It would not be safe to linger in the pass if one of our carriages broke down. She cannot come with us, and there’s an end on it – no hay mas que decir.’

  An anxious Doña Marisa fingered her rosary. She reminded me that something could still go wrong again in this ‘cursed land and beyond’, what with the banditti who roamed in the Simplon pass on the Italian side, eager to rob her of her precious orange diamond ring and her prized cuckoo clocks. I hung my head in sorrow and despair, knowing not how to persuade Doña Marisa to rescue Emmerence from her sad fate. I clasped my hands, and I prayed to God aloud.

  ‘Grüezi! God! I thank you for sending Emmerence to me. If she hadn’t saved me on the bridge, I would have fallen into the Saltina. So I humbly ask for your help to save her now from turning into a goitre or a cretin. We cannot take her with us to a moon. It cannot be helped. Truly! You see, our carriages are stuffed with people, and minha Senhora’s cuckoo clocks, and bottles and bottles of Señor Gonzalez’s wine, and the alphorn that he cozened from a shepherd, and, oh yes, his wheel of Emmental cheese that he hid in the boot, and there’s an end on it. Amen.’

  I had no sooner finished my prayer and crossed myself, than a miracle occurred. Que milagre! Pico resolved to foot it up the pass, and thus Emmerence could take his place in the carriage. Doña Marisa approved of this plan, and she scolded me for not telling her of my fall on the bridge and Emmerence’s heroic act. She glanced with an arched brow at her cortejo as if challenging him to disobey her wishes.

  ‘Humph. I am equal to the task,’ declared Señor Gonzalez, who bemoaned that he would have to foot it as well so as not to be outdone by a mere boy. He leant out the window to rap the roof with his bastón, and he instructed the driver to turn the carriage round.

  ‘Huzzah! Señor Gonzalez for ever.’ I bounced in my seat in high spirits, my legs swinging when I chanced to kick him.

  ‘Aieeee!’ cried he. With a grimace, he gripped his sore knee.

  On our entering Sebastian Square, a sweet-tone bell of grace began to chime, and the doors of the chapel swung open. With an eager eye, I watched the parishioners mount the few steps to the chapel, when I espied Emmerence standing at the entrance, her head bent as if in prayer. ‘Emmerence,’ shouted I, as I leant out the window of our carriage, wildly waving my cap. ‘The moon! Come with us to a moon.’ Emmerence started on seeing Doña Marisa speaking in earnest with Herr Pfarrer Haas, and she uttered a cry of wonder. As she ran towards us, I sensed the gladness and hope in her heart, and I knew then that we would be reunited with our friend, for God had ordained it so.

  Chapter Ten

  The Dancing Maja

  MY FIRST BITTER HEART-ACHE, thinks I, began one bleak, rain-soaked day in the Simplon pass, the day I learnt why Doña Marisa had abandoned me as a bebê when we lived in Lisbon. She, who half-created me, had cared not whether I perished in a foundling hospital. She blamed Satan for making her do evil things in her past. Until then, I never truly thought much of evil, being a mere child at the time. I knew not the power of evil. I knew not how it can make you do things you know are wrong. I knew not how it can ruin you if you give it leave. But on that sad day in the Simplon pass, I came to know something of evil.

  In Brieg, Señor Gonzalez hired a mule, claiming he could not foot it up the Simplon pass as promised because I had kicked him on the knee earlier that morning. I giggled into my hand, and when Emmerence wondered at my mirth, I explained how I had prayed to God to make Señor Gonzalez want to go rightly in this world. My new companion, on discovering that Pico had given up his place in the carriage for her, saluted him with ‘merci vielmal’ and waved her straw hat as we passed him on the covered bridge at the Saltina. She had never travelled through the Simplon pass before, and thus every bridge, every torrent, every cascade seemed vastly more interesting with her by my side, now that we would be girl explorers together.

  At the first refuge or sheltering-house for travellers, shepherds and chamois-hunters along the Simplon pass, we came upon a Swiss girl of seven years of age, dressed in tattered clothes. This delicate girl had a sickly countenance like so many of the peasant-folk in the Valais. A shepherd’s daughter, she had walked down the steep mountain-side by herself to sell pressed Alpine roses and leaves that she carried in a basket. Doña Marisa gave a franc to the girl. ‘Merci vielmal,’ whispered this tiny thing in a trembling voice. I wondered if she ever laughed or cried given that she seemed wholly without strength to do either.

  ‘Pobrecita! What a sad fate she will have,’ lamented Doña Marisa. When we departed the refuge, the sight of the diseased girl made Emmerence sob into her hand. She wiped her tears with her apron, and she thanked Doña Marisa again and again for taking her into her service. Doña Marisa handed her some pressed flowers and leaves. ‘Keep these inside your Bible and never forget your homeland,’ instructed she.

  As we climbed up the dusty pass, Señor Gonzalez rode alongside our carriage to speak with Doña Marisa, he having found our guide Denzler No. 2 too quiet for his liking. He shouted to his lady over the rumble of the carriage that the Simplon pass was truly a noble road, similar to a carriageway with its posts or low walls. He thought the road most scenic, indeed, as it wound through hills covered with majestic pines.

  ‘Qué maravilla!’ exclaimed Señor Gonzalez. We had reached the gallery of the Ganther – a tunnel, which, according to our guide, had been dug by blasting through solid granite. On quitting the gallery, we crossed the lofty bridge of the Ganther, which is where I lost sight of Pico, he having fallen farther and farther behind on the road.

  In Berisal we came across the third refuge with an inn and horses. I begged Señor Gonzalez to hire a mule for Pico, and he advised it would cost me nine francs. I dug into my pockets one by one, whereupon I handed him a total of eight francs he had paid me to stop jodeling whilst we travelled in Switzerland. Señor Gonzalez was all amazement that he had paid me that much money.

  ‘You are a franc short, foot-boy,’ noted he, jingling the coins in his hand.

  I dug again into another pocket, and to my surprise, I pulled out something roundish, something I had put there an age ago during our stay in Zürich. With an impish grin, I handed a wooden button to him.

  ‘A button does not a franc make,’ insisted he.

  ‘Señor Gonzalez?’ I bit my lip.

  ‘Sí? Well, out with it.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘A-ho alli ho alli ho-u ho-u ho ulli lui.’

  He started at my loud jodel. ‘Ay! I never want to hear a jodel again. How is it that a country of sublime beauty could have such a ridiculous jodel?’

  I took another deep breath. ‘A-ho alli ho alli ho-u ho-u ho ulli lui alli ho-u ho-u holli dulli hulli dulli ho-u.’

  ‘Basta! Basta!’ With alacrity, he paid me a franc to stop jodeling.

  I examined the coin. With an air of triumph, I held out my hand. ‘Ha! Ha! Here’s the franc I o
we you.’

  Señor Gonzalez snatched the silver coin from me, and he began to grumble – something about being cozened by a mere child. When, finally, Pico trudged up to the third refuge, I told him that I had paid nine francs to hire a mule. ‘Huzzah! Soofia-Eee for ever,’ cheered he. And that is how I saved my cousin Pico for a second time, the first being when I had paid the gipsy duke to release him from service.

  Thereafter, we passed through more tunnels – the Shalbert Gallery, the Gallery of the Glaciers – and, according to our guide, we had reached the highest point of the Simplon road. At dusk, we weary travellers entered a wild and lonely valley, where, in the hamlet of Simplon, we lodged at the Post-House and supped on fresh eggs and mountain trout and something called fritters, which turned out to be frogs legs. ‘The fritters taste chicken-y,’ declared Pico. But I wouldn’t eat them, nor would I eat the eggs. Emmerence assured me the magic eggs could cure anything – disease, melancholy, fatigue. To please my companion, I ate a magic egg, but nothing of note happened to me once I did.

  The next morning I wished for neatly-dressed braids, and so my companion braided my short hair and tied it with ribbon. She asked if I had any girl’s clothes. To be sure, I quickly denied having any out of fear that Doña Marisa would make me wear the Black Forest costume with bright red bollenhut again. I told her that I, who had been hired as a foot-boy, preferred to dress in boy’s clothes. My relationship with Doña Marisa confused her. I wonder now what she thought of our travelling party’s foreign mix of manners and attitudes – British, Portuguese, Spanish – and how strange and shocking it must have been for a Swiss girl like her.

  Our carriages ready, we began the descent on the pass. After we had quitted the shadowy gallery of Algaby, we traversed the dark and haunting valley of Gondo, where I imagined the restless and tortured soul of Pontius Pilate roaming in the barren landscape, drifting over the lofty rocks or hovering above the road carved on the granite. Señor Gonzalez must have sensed my dread, for he likened this gloomy place to the nether world of Dante’s Inferno. When we crossed a sturdy bridge, below which in the abyss a whitish vapour rose from the raging and roaring torrent, I became convinced that Satan lived here, and I wondered if he knew this Signor Dante.

  Strange grey clouds resembling whirligigs appeared overhead, and so we sought shelter in the ninth refuge, our party being the sole travellers at this lonely sheltering-house. While we waited for the rain to cease, an ancient shepherd, wild and hungry-looking, entered the refuge, asking if we had any food to give him. Doña Marisa handed him some bread and cheese, for which he grunted his thanks ere he vanished.

  ‘Ay, poverty and hunger can make you desperate,’ said she.

  ‘I stole an onion once,’ admitted I. ‘Sister Matilde made me give it back.’

  ‘Sometimes you can’t take back what you have done,’ returned she in a mournful tone.

  This puzzled me. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Listen, and you will understand. There once lived a poor widow named Jacinta,’ Doña Marisa began. ‘Her sole occupations were to embroider shirts for a few réis while she cared for her grandchild. Her daughter sold roasted chestnuts in the Praça de Comércio, the Commercial Square, and often disappeared in the evenings. They barely made enough réis to survive, and they would go hungry when given the choice of eating sardinha for dinner or purchasing coal to heat their mean little abode during the winter.’

  ‘But what was there to eat?’ asked I.

  ‘The trick is to drink down a great deal of water and then go to sleep so as not to think of food,’ Doña Marisa revealed to me. ‘One day, as Jacinta’s daughter roasted her one thousandth chestnut, a fat friar dressed in a brown serge and black cowl and wearing sandals introduced himself as Brother Rustico. He asked her if she enjoyed dancing, to which she nodded in reply, and he convinced her that if she joined the sisterhood, she would never go hungry again.

  ‘Brother Rustico conducted her to a convent surrounded by a high wall, its garden filled with exotic flowers, fountains, shady alcoves and sequestered walkways. There, in this veritable Eden, she partook of a banquet offered to novitiates like her. Later, she met with the Abbess, who would teach her how to dance the bolero, fandango and valza, how to speak proper English and Spanish and how to dress in maja costume, complete with a flounced basquiña, trimmed bodice with tassels, lace mantilla, embroidered jacket, snow-white silk stockings and silk slippers.’

  I scratched my head. ‘The nuns at the Convento do Desterro never danced.’

  Señor Gonzalez uttered a loud groan, and I wondered why.

  ‘My papai says I shall never dance the bolero.’ I shuddered with fear when I recalled how angry he had become at the thought of me dancing the bolero.

  ‘No te preocupes. Do not worry. I shall teach you the bolero.’ Doña Marisa resumed her story. ‘In the evenings, unbeknown to her mother, she joined the other nuns, these lindissimas dressed as majas, to dance with noblemen, wealthy merchants and British officers. Her charms enchanted many a guest who wished to dance with her for ever, but the Abbess rejected each of the suitors. Until one day a Spanish nobleman named Don Rafael de la Riva y de León declared he would pay many a gold escudo for this lindissima. With the blessing of the Abbess, she danced away with Don Rafael, never to return to the convent.’

  ‘Was Don Rafael in love?’ wondered I.

  ‘He believed himself in love.’

  ‘Humph, in love…’ Señor Gonzalez muttered to himself.

  Doña Marisa continued. ‘When Jacinta discovered the truth that her daughter had come under the protection of Don Rafael without being married to him, she bawled and beat her chest, and she made herself seriously ill. The day before she died, Jacinta gave her daughter an ancient key. She said it belonged to Don Luis de Luna, and she begged her daughter to find her real father in Cádiz before it was too late.’

  ‘Don Luis?’ I thought for a moment, before I remembered the story of the magic oranges. ‘He tricked Jacinta, and he took the pretty orange diamonds.’

  ‘Sí, and he gave Jacinta the ancient key,’ said Doña Marisa. ‘You have a good memory.’

  ‘What was Don Luis like?’

  Doña Marisa shrugged. ‘Jacinta’s daughter refused to see Don Luis. She scoffed at that idea of finding her real father when she had already set her heart on dancing the bolero with Don Rafael every night, wearing beautiful clothes, hiring her own servants and indulging in the best of food and drink.’

  ‘Did Don Rafael like children?’ I wondered out loud, but Doña Marisa glanced away, leaving me with an inward feeling of doom.

  ‘The baby made too much noise and demanded her attention. Don Rafael told her that if she wanted his protection, she must make a bargain with him, to wit, she must take the baby to the Misericórdia, the foundling hospital in Lisbon.’

  ‘What happened then?’ I held my breath, my heart thump-thumping. I already knew the answer, but I wished for my own fairy tale to end happily.

  ‘She made her choice,’ said she in a low, tremulous voice. ‘There, at the foundling hospital in the forenoon, she placed her bundled infant in the arms of a nun. She kissed her tiny daughter good-bye, and she began a new life with Don Rafael. And so that’s what happened.’

  ‘That’s not how the story goes,’ shouted I. My indignant outburst took Doña Marisa and everyone by surprise. I knew how the nuns had found me, and like any child who recalls particular details of a story, especially one involving herself, a sense of outrage occurs when a story-teller changes the story.

  ‘Ay! What a temper you have,’ exclaimed she.

  ‘You put me in the roda during the night,’ I accused her. ‘Sister Matilde said so.’

  ‘Well, I might have done. It does not signify.’ Her evasiveness put her in the fidgets.

  Señor Gonzalez’s groan of disbelief only heightened my own disquietude. It seemed to me that a mamãe should not give up her own child. Had she not been all I had in the world after my avó, my grand
mother, died? This touched me to the quick, and the insides of my belly began to burn from the red-hot anger of a thousand buried suspicions and hurts. A sudden fury overcame me. I imagined myself under a spell in which I had been turned into a ferocious lion – rrraaaawwrr! – clawing my paws in the air and making a great deal of noise with my snaps and snarls.

  ‘Silencio!’ Doña Marisa chided me, grasping my arms. ‘I came back for you, did I not?’

  I struggled to be free of her. ‘Tell the truth.’

  ‘You must tell her, now that you’ve started this,’ admonished Señor Gonzalez.

  ‘Then listen.’ Doña Marisa trembled. ‘Sí, I did a terrible thing. I put you in the roda at night, and I left you there with a note. I must have…I might have rung the bell to alert the nuns.’

  ‘Sister Matilde found me in the morning. She said I was half-frozen.’ My heart sank to my toes. What I had inwardly suspected and wished not to be true had indeed been true, namely, Doña Marisa had not wanted me, and she got rid of me in a most cruel and reckless manner.

  Doña Marisa’s eyes turned shiny. ‘I was young and foolish at the time, and I was lured by the temptation of wealth and its evil charms – the devil saw to it.’

  ‘Tonta!’ cried I. A bitterness filled my heart, and I wept.

  ‘It seems…it seems I have much to atone for,’ her voice quavered.

  ‘Indeed, but better to do it in this life,’ muttered Señor Gonzalez.

  Doña Marisa searched her cortejo’s face, and when he cast down his eyes, she raised her hand to her left temple as if she wished to rub away her crescent-shaped scar there.

  When my papai had first told me of the erstwhile Marisa Soares Belles and how she had abandoned me at a convent when I was a bebê, I began to dream of her. I had formed a definite image of her in my mind, for no doubt she was a lindissima who tripped about with castanets in her hands because she loved to dance the bolero every night. I imagined her the most beautiful, the most perfect creature in the world, which is why papai had been placed under enchantment.