Medardo Fraile*

Berta’s Presence

It was Lupita’s first birthday. Lupita was an amorphous, attractive being, at once yielding and terrible, whom no one had ever seen in a theatre, a cinema or a café, or even strolling down the street. But she was plotting in silence. She imagined great things, engaged in vigorous movement and was convinced that she would triumph. She smelled delicious in her night attire. She smelled like a little girl about to turn one. Her parents had invited their friends over for a bite to eat. ‘Do come. It’s Lupita’s first birthday.’

Jacobo rang the bell and heard familiar voices inside. When the door opened, he said loudly: ‘Where’s Lupita? Where’s that little rascal?’ And the child appeared, squirming about in her mother’s arms, her small body erect, excited, attentive. Lupita, in her own strange, personal language, had managed to convey to her mother the idea of tying two small, pink bows – like wide-set miniature horns – in her sparse, perfumed hair. It hadn’t been her mother’s doing at all. The suggestion had come from Lupita herself, aware of her charms and her flaws. ‘So what have you got to say for yourself, then, eh? What has Señorita Lupe got to say for herself?’ And Jacobo produced a little box of sweets from his pocket and showed it to her. ‘Baaa!’ said Lupita joyfully, showing the visitor her pink uvula and waving her arms and legs about as if fearlessly leaping over each ‘a’ she uttered. She liked Jacobo.

A bottle on the table reflected the branches of the chestnut tree outside the window. It was a warm evening, with the windows open, full of the distant murmurs and melodies set in motion by the departing sun. One of those evenings on which the scented, rustling countryside suddenly enters the city, as if the countryside had left itself behind for a few hours in order to set the city-dweller humming a tune, whether at a birthday party, in a bar or at home. One of those evenings when the factory siren sounds like the moan of a large, friendly animal gone astray and where the frank, rustic kisses of the soldier and his sweetheart sound like pebbles in a stream. One of those evenings of high, long, tenuous mists, so that, when the first stars come out, they will not appear too naked.

Every now and then, the doorbell rang and new friends came into the room. The engaged couple, bound together by a prickly sweetness, the wounding words recently and rapidly spoken on the landing outside not yet forgotten and transmuted instead into delicate, social irony. The tall friend, in a dark, striped suit, who keeps looking at his watch only immediately to forget what it said, with the look of someone who has left some poor girl standing on a corner. The newlyweds, inured by now to everyone’s jokes, strolling in as if fresh from a gentle walk, he in an immaculate shirt and she full of solicitous gestures. The desperate young woman, who can never persuade her fiancé to accompany her on visits, and whose stockings always bag slightly and who has one permanently rebellious lock of hair. The sporty friend, always fresh from the shower, slightly distant and smiling and as if fearful that the great lighthouse of his chest might go out. And Berta, the outsider, the surprise, the one they had not expected to come.

They all got up again when Berta arrived. She greeted everyone – Jacobo rather coolly – and then immediately turned all her words and attention to Lupita. ‘Look, Lupita, I’ve bought you some earrings. Do you like them?’ Jacobo was put out. He had been just about to speak to Lupita when Berta arrived. He had gone over to her, and Lupita was already looking at him. He was about to say: ‘Aren’t you getting old! One year old already!’ But, when he heard Berta speak, his words seemed pointless and unamusing. They seemed hollow and, therefore, entirely dependent on intonation and timing. He allowed them to die on his lips, and that death was an almost insuperable obstacle to all the other things he subsequently said and thought.

Jacobo knew how difficult it was to speak to children. You had to have something of the lion-tamer about you, or else limitless wit and spontaneity. Children demand a lot of those who speak to them and, unless they instantly succumb to the charm of a phrase, they regard their interlocutor circumspectly and occasionally harshly. They can tell when the words are sincere and when they falter in any way. They cry in terror at clumsy words or words full of twisted intentions or falsehood. And Jacobo, who had, on occasions, spoken to children quite successfully, fell silent, profoundly silent, listening to the river of efficacious words that flowed from Berta to Lupita.

That was one of Berta’s qualities, knowing how to talk to children. With her subtle, imaginative intonation, Berta came out with the most wonderful things. Children stood amazed as they, intently, pleasurably, followed the thread of her voice. It was as if they had before them a fine-feathered, perfumed bird with an attractive, kaleidoscopic throat, like a grotto full of stories and legends. And Berta didn’t change her voice in the least, she was just herself. That voice – thought Jacobo – emerged from clean, colourful depths, it bubbled gently and was, like water, sonorous and fresh, rich and profound. More than that, Berta knew the language of children, knew which syllables to cut out and in what innocent moulds to reshape words so that they could be understood. How could one speak to them using the serious, rule-bound words used by grown-ups, words that have been through the hard school of Grammar?

‘So, Berta, what are you doing here? What happened?’

And while Berta was explaining that she was spending a few days in Madrid before leaving again for Seville, where she had been sent by her company, Lupita was momentarily ignored and she remembered that, before Berta had arrived, someone else had been about to speak to her. And she turned her head, looking at everyone there, one by one, until she found him: Jacobo. Eyes wide, gaze fixed on him, she urged him to say his sentence. Jacobo noticed and grew still more inhibited. For her part, Lupita’s mother, smiling sweetly, followed the direction of her little girl’s eyes. Lupita even uttered the usual password: ‘Baaa!’ But Jacobo, who, when he arrived, had managed some quite acceptable phrases, now nervously crossed his legs, stared into his glass of wine or grimly studied a painting on the wall, or shot a fleeting glance, which he intended to appear casual, at a newspaper or some other object. Lupita felt suspicious, and her gaze grew more searching and persistent. ‘What a strange man. It was so hard to know what he was thinking.’

Jacobo refused, after much hesitation, to compete with Berta. As everyone knew, her presence always made one more aware of one’s own absurdity and the need to make a good impression. Not that he made much of an impression with his familiar long silences, his all-consuming shyness that showed itself in the form of an affected seriousness and slightly tactless, brusque remarks. He could never, with any naturalness, manage those strange verbal deviations of Berta’s, those clean leaps from one word to another. ‘How’s my little babbler, my baboon, my bouncing bean!’ And it worked perfectly. Lupita – like all babies – did babble and could certainly shriek like a baboon and, at certain moments, she actually did resemble one of those neat little butter beans, all creamy and soft.

‘What’s so fascinating about Jacobo, sweetie? Why do you keep looking at him like that?’ said Lupita’s mother.

‘Yes, she won’t take her eyes off him,’ said the others.

And Jacobo gave Lupita a faint smile, accompanied by a determined, almost aggressive look that asked the usual nonsense one asks of children. But his shyness, crouching in his eyes like two dark dots, censured the words it occurred to him to say, pursued and erased them, leaving only a charmless, bitter void. There was a dense silence. Everyone was waiting for something to happen, for Jacobo to speak to Lupita. Half-hidden in a corner, Berta was watching and smiling imperceptibly, curious and silent.

‘It’s awfully hot, don’t you think?’ he said.

And he said this as a warning to the others. He meant to say: ‘Yes, it’s true, children do sometimes stare insistently at some grown-up, it’s a habit they have, but we shouldn’t pay them too much attention, we should simply talk about our own affairs. And it is awfully hot today. Unusual for the time of year. That’s what we should be talking about.’

‘Baaa!’ cried Lupita defiantly.

‘It’s usually getting cooler by now.’

‘Say something to the child! Can’t you see she’s looking at you?’

Yes, the moment had arrived. The silence and the expectation thickened. Eyes flicked from Jacobo to Lupita and back again. Slowly and terribly shyly, almost regretfully, Jacobo finally managed to say:

‘Hello! How are you? Why are you looking at me like that? What’s up? What do you want? What did I do?’

As if he were talking to a moneylender.

‘What do you think she wants? Say something funny, man. Pay her some attention. That’s what you want, isn’t it, Lupita?’

Lupita burst into tears. She had seen the scowling black cloud advancing towards her across the room. And she hadn’t wanted things to go that far. The words had left a dramatic aftertaste in the air, threatening and exciting. Lupita was crying because she had ventured innocently into unknown territory, where the somewhat stiff words exuded a certain bitterness, and where situations crystallized into impossible shapes. The daylight blinked, and the room filled with loud, laborious, rhythmical words of consolation. Lupita pouted and sobbed and wept bitterly. It lasted a long time.

The evening succumbed meekly. The clock struck the hour. Jacobo made his excuses, saying that he was expected elsewhere, then got up and left. He was walking slowly down the street, not sure where he was going. It felt slightly chilly. He was thinking about Berta – to whom he still felt attracted – about Lupita, so friendly and funny and lovely, and about his friends, his old friends. How nice it would have been to have stayed with them to the end.