‘Our fireplace…Do you remember our fireplace, Uncle Tonet?’ said Dona Xima, sitting down beside him. ‘I like to call you Uncle.’
She had taken off her travel coat revealing a light spring dress in pale ivory. She moved with aplomb and was always smiling. I remembered the masks of early Greek theatre, where each character was comic or tragic from beginning to end. She had banished the word ‘no’ from her vocabulary. ‘Xima, the woman who never loses her temper…’ she was used to getting everything she wanted with her smile. Either she had no feelings and behaved like an automaton or she was endowed with the ability to manage them. I have sometimes thought that people like her, provided with moral stupidity, are not responsible for the catastrophes they unleash; instead of being condemned like deliberate criminals and burned in Hell, after death they will keep on smiling equally to Truth and Error from the darkness of limbo. The Senyor compared her to a cat, and it seemed obvious that a soul such as hers could not be entirely rational.
‘Isn’t it true,’ she said, resting one knee on the bench, ‘that you’ll come to Paris with me as you did last time? Capoul will debut in a new production of Faust at the beginning of the year.’
‘Debut is a gallicism, Xima.’
‘And what am I, but a gallicism?’
‘A delightful gallicism. How is Campo Formio?’
‘I’d rather not talk about him. Tout à fait snob.’
‘I warned you.’
‘He still thinks he’s in love with the Empress. Do you like Eugenia de Montijo? Don’t you think she’s a little withered? She’s fiery, as a Spaniard should be, but her virtue goes to her head. She loves to let everyone know that she’s righteous. Since she’s no child any more…’
The Senyor closed his eyes.
‘Never a kind word…’
‘That’s all I have to say about her. She doesn’t know how to behave like a queen.’
‘Do you think Louis Napoleon knows how to behave like a king?’
Xima fluttered her eyelashes.
‘Il est charmant. And awfully dignified. Imagine that I still haven’t managed to get an official introduction. But I will this winter. I have his word. I refuse to enter the Tuileries through the back door.’
‘His conversations with Bismarck,’ said Don Toni, ‘don’t strike me as particularly dignified. He oughtn’t to have agreed to speak to the Chancellor, but rather to the King. He has humiliated France in the eyes of the other countries. The Hohenzollern, who are not really kings, but marquises, are far more effective.’
Dona Xima remained silent because she was not interested in politics. He noticed she was getting bored and took her hand.
‘Let me see this bracelet…’
She caressed his cheek.
‘Oh, how did you guess? They’re magnificent diamonds, aren’t they?’
‘They could be bigger. And what else?’
‘This ring.’
‘In exchange for…?’
Dona Xima feigned the sort of indignation she was incapable of feeling and replied—things must be called by their names—with a cynical sentence.
‘Mais voyons, Monsieur, je suis une honnête femme.’
‘You’re worth a lot, Xima,’ said the Senyor. ‘You’re a gift from God.’
‘In Bearn they think it’s from the Devil. Oh come with me, Tonet. I bought the town house at the Etoile, remember? It will all be just the same as the last time, only this time I’ll be paying for you. I’m rich.’
The Senyor did not reply. She had picked up a book and began to read:
‘Un soir, t’en souvient-il…? Are you a poet now?’ she asked. ‘That’s why the Emperor’s diamonds seemed small to you.’
The Senyor waved his hand indecisively, as he always did. She laughed.
‘Poets are generous. Instead of giving diamonds they give moons and stars…The Emperor of France, poor thing, could only buy me this.’
Was it a request? Had she really come for money? Everyone knew the Senyors did not have much, that there were heavy mortgages weighing on their lands, whereas Dona Xima arrived in a carriage drawn by two English horses, with a footman and a valet in livery. But her heart was cold. I expected her to make a specific request at any moment. If she had done so, I believe the peasant in me, violent and attached to material possessions, would have overlooked all the conventions and given the intruder the answer she deserved. This is a poor land, and we have been taught that because we live in poverty any change could make things even worse. What I did not know was that women such as Dona Xima do not ask; they wait for others to offer.
He looked up: ‘So you’re rich now? I’d already heard through the mail that Campo Formio was ruined.’
She looked at him, flattered to see such evil powers attributed to herself.
‘Don’t be mean, Tonet. I’d never ruin a man. And if I did, he’d always be welcome at my table. I still haven’t paid for the town house, you know; but I told the Emperor about it and he laughed. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?’
‘So you don’t need anything from me? In your letter…’
‘Oh,’ she quietly interrupted, ‘that was before I spoke to the Emperor. Didn’t I just tell you that he laughed?’
I let out a silent sigh of relief. Suddenly, the twitching silhouette of Barbara Titana appeared on the doorstep; she had already gone mad some time ago. She was tall and shabby, covered from head to toe with a dark cloak.
‘Oh, Xima, my child,’ she cried, ‘let me kiss you. You’re an angel. I can’t touch you with my hands, child…’ In her excitement she started speaking in the third person: ‘There’s a carriage with two generals waiting for her outside. The Kings of the Earth bow down when she goes by. What do you think of that, Senyor? We’ve never seen anything like it in Bearn.’
‘Never, Titana,’ said the Senyor.
Dona Xima looked at her in surprise: ‘Is that Barbara Titana? I wouldn’t have recognized her.’
The madwoman walked up to her.
‘Xima, the priest wants to set you up on an altar.’
‘That’s right, Barbareta,’ laughed Dona Xima.
Barbara stared at her in ecstasy.
‘Senyor,’ she whispered, ‘touch her. Touch her face, even if it’s only for a second.’
Dona Xima graciously consented: ‘You touch me, Barbareta.’
She fearfully dared to touch the lady’s bracelets.
‘How lovely…’
She was kneeling down and praying. Dona Xima smiled as you would at a dog or a cat.
‘Has she lost her mind?’ she asked.
Don Toni explained that she had, and that the villagers therefore considered her in the odour of sanctity. The young woman seemed pleased.
‘Good. Now I have a saint on my side,’ she said. She took everything the same way.
‘God will protect you, dear,’ Titana continued in a somewhat declamatory tone. ‘The good you have done will have its reward.’
‘But I’m a devil, Barbara.’
‘An angel, an angel from Heaven…we all adore you.’
The intensity of her feelings was such that it seemed theatrical. She declaimed like a bad actress. I have since realized that many of the insane are affected, contrary to what one would expect. The observation, in all fairness, was Don Toni’s. ‘When one lacks a critical sense,’ he said, ‘all that’s left is to play to the gallery. Just look at all those “sincere” love letters the world round. Don’t they seem ridiculous? Isn’t Ophelia, poor thing, a prime example of pretentiousness?’
Suddenly Titana grabbed Dona Xima and kissed her. Then she flung herself on the floor and cried: ‘Now I can die in peace! Kiss her, Senyor!’
‘That’s enough, Barbara.’
‘Kiss her, Senyor,’ the madwoman repeated, getting more and more excited.
The Senyor kissed Xima, and Titana disappeared with a howl.
‘I didn’t know she’d gone mad,’ his niece said. ‘Didn’t you tell me she’d fallen in love with you?’
‘A long time ago…’ the Senyor granted.
‘And what about you?’
‘I was a saint.’
‘You didn’t like her?’
‘She’s always been ugly.’
‘Look what your sanctity has done for her.’
‘She’s satisfied,’ the Senyor objected. ‘And now you seem to be the one she’s in love with.’
Dona Xima, who knew all sorts of people in Paris and had picked up the latest scientific trends, smiled like an expert: ‘No, Tonet. She was putting herself in my place.’
‘Goodness!’ said the Senyor. ‘Since when do you know about these things?’
‘We’re awfully up-to-date in Paris.’
My heart was heavy after witnessing that scene. Uncle and niece were impassive, cold as the powerful often are, sometimes seeming to be utterly selfish in the eyes of the people. They were like two surgeons, two vivisectionists applying their scalpels with no regard for the pain they may cause. For a moment I loathed them. They were the ‘Senyors’, the enemy. My resentment did not last long. We are all what we are brought up to be. The ladies at the Court of France fainted at the sight of a spider, but watched the torture of la Brinvilliers and the quartering of Damiens.