Private Life (19 page)

This is why Bobby felt equally at ease in the world of trollops, young married ladies, or at Hortènsia Portell’s table in a comfortable tea parlor. He was the kind of man who needed nothing more than a comfortable chair and a pair of lips prepared to sip and talk of their own volition.

The widow Xuclà wanted her son to marry. Bobby never contradicted his mother when her sermons took this tack. He would let her
go on, while he scratched his moustache as if to say he had all the time in the world.

The widow Xuclà had no love lost for the men of the Lloberola clan. She thought Frederic was a useless ne’er-do-well. Old Don Tomàs reminded her of a mummy festooned with rosaries and hypocrisy. Nevertheless, she felt a real affection for Leocàdia. And, despite Leocàdia’s being so different from Pilar, leading a life of patience, devotion and spiritual retreat, not a month would go by without her visiting the widow on Carrer Ample. Conversation between these two old ladies was a little painful. Pilar didn’t have the slightest interest in the things that interested Leocàdia. Though there were long interludes of silence, neither of them would give up these visits, and whenever Pilar spoke of Leocàdia, she praised her to the heavens. Narrow-minded Leocàdia, in the days when Pilar’s reputation was in danger, was among those who always spoke of “poor Pilar.” If Frederic ever mentioned the widow Xuclà’s fancies and frivolities to his mother, Leocàdia would respond, even a bit forcefully, “You know I don’t like it when you speak like this about one of the people I hold in highest esteem. What’s more, I’m certain it is all untrue.”

When the bottom fell out for the Lloberolas, and they stopped seeing practically anyone, the widow Xuclà took special care to be kind to Leocàdia and to visit her more often.

Don Tomàs was grateful for the widow Xuclà’s attitude, because she was the daughter of the Comtes de Sallent, because their grandparents were cousins, and because on the Romaní coat of arms there
was a branch of rosemary, a dog and a half-moon. These things were very important to Don Tomàs.

FREDERIC HAD GONE looking for Bobby at the Club Eqüestre the very night of his father’s calamity and the scene with the mossèn, but Bobby was still at supper at the Liceu Opera House, as he was every night. Frederic telephoned him and he came right away.

Frederic felt trapped and had no inkling that things would be resolved so favorably for him the following day.

Bobby was expecting him to relay some particular about Rosa Trènor, or give some account of how the reconciliation had gone. Frederic had to make a tremendous effort to impress upon Bobby that the issue was money. Bobby’s expression became distant. Frederic realized this, but he persisted. When Bobby realized how much was involved, he retreated further, and said he couldn’t take any immediate action without consulting his mother. Frederic knew this response was just an excuse. He knew Bobby could dispose of that much money and a great deal more without any prior consultation. Frederic was consumed with a distinct hatred for his friend. He saw how the blood of the conservative Jew flowed beneath those cheeks, generally considered the least judgmental and most generous cheeks in Barcelona. Frederic used an expression that Bobby found a bit rude, which led to five tense minutes between the two friends. Seeing that nothing good would come of that approach, Frederic surrendered his
Lloberola pride and supercilious attitude, and tried to speak with his heart in his hand. Perhaps he revealed a bit too much weakness, and even groveled a bit, but Bobby didn’t budge.

At heart, Bobby had no real liking for Frederic. He had tolerated him all his life, out of an aversion to discord. He had listened in disgust, always with a pleasant smile, to all Frederic’s stories of grandeur. Bobby pretended to have a great friendship with Frederic precisely because of the antipathy his mother professed for all the Lloberola men. For Bobby, who truly loved Pilar Romaní, this defiance regarding Frederic was one of those silly punctilios that sometimes crop up between two people who love each other.

But now, what Frederic was asking of Bobby was very unpleasant. It was a nuisance for a man as passive, self-centered and indolent as Bobby Xuclà. As he watched Frederic grovel and go into excessive detail about his family’s privations, on the inside he was feeling avenged for all the tedious heraldic lectures, grand adventures, and useless irritating rhetoric that Frederic had foisted on him, oblivious to how annoying he was. Bobby concentrated his entire being behind his little blond moustache and his dead blue gaze. He listened to Frederic with relish, and Frederic barreled ahead, trying to make an impression on him, to touch his heart. If Frederic had been more astute, perhaps he would have realized he was on false ground. Perhaps he would have understood what Bobby’s blond moustache and dead gaze were saying.

When Frederic had finally hung out all his dirty, mended laundry, Bobby, colder than ever, but with some sense of satisfaction,
pronounced a few words, the same few words he had put him off with before. He had taken a stand, and even if Frederic’s children had appeared chopped to pieces at his feet, he wouldn’t have gone back on it. Offering Frederic no assurance, Bobby said he would speak with his mother and give him a definitive answer the following day.

When he was alone, Frederic was full of shame and desperation at his weakness, at having made such a confession to a Jew. But necessity was stronger. He would have been capable of approaching Pilar Romaní himself, or, as he referred to her in his running monologues of entrapment, “Tia Pilar, that rotten b.…”

The next day things had changed, as if by miracle. We already know how Guillem got the letter, and how Frederic was freed of his commitment to the Baró de Falset. Once Frederic was sure of his salvation, he went over to Bobby’s house to spit all his scorn in his face.

In the meantime, Bobby had spoken with Pilar of the Lloberola situation. In his cool manner and his monotonous and apathetic voice, he told his mother about the scene with Frederic in such a way that the widow Xuclà wasn’t certain if he was happy or sad about his situation. Pilar advised Bobby to help Frederic, not because “that nincompoop deserves it, nor because it will change anything, because there will be nothing left of the Lloberolas. But do it for Leocàdia, who is so unfortunate, and has always been such a good friend to me.”

As we have said, Bobby venerated the widow Xuclà, and he found in his mother’s way of speaking the elegant and unspoiled mercy of a grande dame. He decided to underwrite the promissory note
or, if necessary, to hand Frederic a check for fifty thousand pessetes, and put a stop to the whole thing, without setting any conditions for its restitution.

But the mercy of the grande dame had not been transformed into the mercy of the gentleman in Bobby. Bobby felt like humiliating his friend a bit, to impress on him the favor he was doing him. If Frederic had been a different kind of man, Bobby would have behaved in a cool, indifferent and even elegant way. But twenty-five years of intolerable condescension and vanity on Frederic’s part had peppered Bobby’s tongue.

When the two friends found themselves face to face, the Lloberola heir, huffing and puffing, smiling, a bit heated, wore the supercilious look of a man who has just discovered America and spies a mouse gnawing at his heels. Slowly he spat these words out onto Bobby’s blond moustache and dead gaze:

“I’ve come to tell you that you needn’t put yourself out. I am grateful for your generosity but you needn’t speak with your mother. Fortunately, I don’t need to ask favors of anyone. I have resolved the issue of the promissory note. I am only sorry to have taken up your time and to have spoken of disagreeable things … with a person who …”

Bobby was deepy outraged. His dead gaze took on a special life, as if a wasp had stung him in the eye. His pupil felt engorged with blood and rage, like a mongoose in the presence of a cobra. Bobby was furious, because the scene in which he would humiliate Frederic, and make him pay for twenty-five years of condescension, had come
to naught. Bobby would have given half his fortune to make Frederic eat the fifty thousand pessetes like a dog.

But this burst of cholera took its time in reaching Bobby’s tongue, and he intimated in his usual tone of voice (fully prepared to substitute whatever tone of voice was necessary):

“I couldn’t be more pleased …, but I assure you – if you wish, I will show it to you – that I had a check for fifty thousand pessetes signed and made out to you …”

“Thank you, my friend, thank you. That is very generous of you, I won’t be needing it …”

“Listen, Frederic, I find your tone of disdain offensive. Anyone would think I had done you wrong. You came and regaled me with a string of misfortunes that I couldn’t care less about, do you understand? Not at all. And I was prepared to be generous with you …”

“Generous!”

Frederic let loose with a peal of laughter worthy of Rigoletto, and Bobby couldn’t take it any more. He let it all come out, he rained insults on him, calling him ridiculous, grotesque, an ass, not just him, but his father and his whole family. And a joyful Frederic replied at an even higher pitch, dizzy at the opportunity to offend that person to whom he had always felt so superior, whom he had always considered an also-ran. Now, seeing short, pudgy Bobby with his blond moustache, confronting him, tall and stately, a Lloberola from head to foot, he lost control. Amid the coarse invective, he included a reference to the widow Xuclà. “What did you say about my mother?” shrieked Bobby, his voice rising to a squeal, which made Frederic observe him
with even greater disdain. Naturally, Frederic thought he was within his rights to say what he wished about her, and he said it all in the most stupid, unthinking and gratuitous way he knew how.

Bobby dug his fingernails into Frederic’s face. The only reason Frederic didn’t thrash him was that he was in his house, and among gentlemen it is not customary to thrash the master of the house when paying a visit.

On the most idiotic account, for practically no reason at all, these two apparently inseparable friends quarreled, and never spoke to each other again for the rest of their lives.

That night Bobby didn’t dine at the Liceu. He stayed home and kept his mother company. Bobby accepted the widow Xuclà’s way of thinking. He found her youthful indiscretions to be very human and considered the whole thing fine and dandy, because Bobby was a skeptic and his morality was rotten to the core. But that night, in reaction to the insults Frederic had dared to hurl at the widow Xuclà, he saw his mother as a saint. Above all, he valued more than ever her mercy and her elegance. She was a true lady. In the folds of her lips, her slightly pronounced chin, her wrinkles, her tired eyes, and the white hair of her decrepit majesty, still tall and smiling, he found the full essence of that aristocratic and mercantile Barcelona, popular, proud, and a bit childish, all traces of which were fading.

And Bobby was right. The widow Xuclà represented all those things, and more. Even more than a man, an old woman who has lived a full life retains the imprint of the past and the sensible permanence of memory. Women have more passive nerve receptors,
and more receptive souls, so they do not consume themselves nor do they expend all their energy in action as men do. Women are both more covetous and more foresightful. Between the folds of their wrinkled skin, they have the good faith to collect dreams, to gather up adventures, and to preserve there what cannot be seen and can only be sensed: the perfume of history.

EL BARÓ DE FALSET didn’t say so much as a word to his wife about how Guillem was blackmailing him. He spent two months in agony. The day after he sent the letter to Frederic, he realized how stupid he had been to write it. Guillem hadn’t approached him, but he feared a new attack at any moment. Two months later, an event occurred that caused a commotion among many Barcelona ladies. It bore all the features of a crime of passion, and eased the baron’s terrible anxieties a bit. The event in question was the murder of Dorotea Palau, the dressmaker.

Dorotea was found with a dagger through her heart in a well-known
meublé
. She was in the company of a French individual whom all the circumstances seemed to incriminate, despite his protesting that he had had nothing to do with the crime. The court found him guilty.