Those long hours by the fireside…how sweetly their two lives went by, seemingly so close to peace—and I do not mean that of the approaching grave, but the blessed peace of the chosen few. Memories seem as nebulous as the sky or the mountain of Es Teix that rose up on the north side of the house outside the balconies of the blue and gold room. Dona Maria Antònia confused dates, travels and facts, so her stories were tinted with the poetry of dreams. The Senyor came to the rescue undoing her mistakes and restoring the truth, making me feel in a different way the poetry that according to Pythagoras is found in numbers and in the harmony of the stars. The fog alternately drew and opened its curtains over Es Teix and on the two lives that tried to stop time and freeze the Absolute once and for all. The Senyor had told me that nothing is as absolute as that which is conventional, and that the platinum meter in Meudon is a meter for the simple reason that we call it so. Once again the name creates the Universe. He knew that those remembrances, those travels and anecdotes were the products of his fantasy and of the words he used to forge them.
‘Nobody,’ he said, ‘has really seen the Place de l’Etoile and the eleven avenues that branch out from it. One can only see it if one imagines it drawn out on a ground plan, as did the architect who designed it. If one tries to see it by standing in the square, one can’t grasp the whole thing and only catches unconnected pieces. The Place de l’Etoile is only beautiful with one’s eyes closed.’
I lowered mine to remember that one night, almost twenty years back, near the downstairs fireplace, the Senyor contemplated Dona Xima, dressed in white, entering the box at the Paris Opera. ‘You could see me clearly from far away with your eyes closed?’
I can assure you, Miquel, that this drawing room where I now write, where I have lived with the Senyors and where I continue to seek shelter, is no longer the same. When I look at it I can barely recognize it and only in the night does it appear in the solitude of my room just as it was in the last few years; in my dreams, I can still hear those conversations in scattered pieces, chasing after days long gone.
‘…What did they charge us for that pheasant at the Palais Royal, Tonet?’
‘The Restaurant Véfour. The one with red carpeting.’
‘Tomeu says the young mule refuses to eat.’
‘I don’t trust those Venetian gondoliers.’
‘Rossini copied Mozart.’
‘What do you know, Tonet? How would you know if the seats are numbered?’
Es Teix was covered in shadows and that premonition of a storm heightened the indoor peace of the drawing room.
‘It looks as though it might snow,’ the Senyor said. ‘We’re lucky we have this fireplace.’
Opening my eyes to tell Tomeu to fill the woodshed I snap back into reality: never again will we have to light the fire. I fall asleep again and the kind ghosts that triumph over time keep on speaking softly.
‘Wouldn’t you like to hear Manon?’
‘The Hohenzollern were never kings.’
‘I didn’t recognize them. That’s why I was so polite.’
‘Marry them, Joan.’
‘It’s nice to know that we don’t owe anyone a cèntim.’
‘It’s twelve. Should we say our three Ave Marias?’
‘Light a candle…’
After lunch, which was served in the same room, Dona Maria Antònia used to fall asleep again. I used to take those moments to try to draw the Senyor towards religious practices.
‘How long has it been since your Honour last made a confession?’
‘That depends on what you call a confession. I think I make confessions all the time. Besides, I’ll try to make my Memoirs as accurate as possible.’
I pointed out that a confession is not a mere listing of the acts committed, but rather an acknowledgement that requires pain and the intention of not repeating the sins. He skilfully eluded the subject.
‘At my age? How do you expect me to run off to Paris with a young girl now?’
‘Yes, but what if you were thirty or forty years younger?’
‘Forty years younger…There are certain things you simply cannot understand.’
‘I was sent off to a seminary when I was a child, Senyor.’
He looked at me, sitting up straight in his armchair.
‘I realize that I’m selfish,’ he said, ‘but I have trouble putting myself in other people’s shoes. That’s why I’ll never be a good novelist, which is what I would have liked to be. I can’t imagine how a young, strong, healthy man like you…’
It was not the first time he alluded to my supposed physical superiority and I thought it my duty to interrupt him.
‘Your Honour is forgetting that I’m a priest.’
He took me by the arm and caressed it firmly, as if he were giving me a massage.
‘I’m sure you’re sincere,’ he replied. ‘One is always learning new things, even at eighty, Son.’
He seemed so engrossed that I dared not add a word. We were both thinking about that tremendous scandal, that mortal and dazzling beauty that had once shaken the capital of the world.
‘You know that the Emperor gave her a town house near the Etoile. She had ruined Campo Formio. Her success didn’t last very long: before the end of that year the Empire collapsed.’
‘Didn’t you think of her the last time you were in Paris?’
‘I tried not to. We’d stopped writing quite a while before.’
I was surprised, because I did not suspect that they kept on writing after the Senyor was reconciled with his wife. He read my mind.
‘She wrote me a few times giving me news and asking me for money. The revolutionaries burned the Tuileries and the town house at Etoile went with it. In my Memoirs I describe her flight from Paris. Can you guess how she got out? She fled with Eugenia de Montijo. It’s not publicly known, nor would it be right to divulge it out of respect towards Eugenia, who is an aunt of the House of Alba. Naturally, over time, what is now gossip will become history.’
I could not overcome my astonishment. The Senyor added: ‘Between you and me, I’ll tell you that the Empress was terrified. They say she didn’t want to leave the Tuileries, but that was because she didn’t know where to go and because the communards had besieged the palace. Then Xima appeared and they left in disguise through the Place Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois and took a hackney to the house of the Empress’s dentist, an American by the name of Evans. By now it’s a known historical fact. However, what they left out is that Evans didn’t help them escape from Paris out of loyalty towards Eugenia de Montijo, but because he was Dona Xima’s lover. Don’t say a word about this for the time being, Joan.’
‘But the Empress…’
‘She knew everything,’ he interrupted. ‘Such are the wonders of the Earth.’
Then he started telling me for the hundredth time about the première of Faust and the brilliance of Gounod.
‘In a century like ours, which has produced so many musicians, one could say that Gounod is not an innovator. However, he’s an inspired and skilled composer who works with the materials supplied by others. Wagner has undoubtedly revolutionized many things, but he lacks Gounod’s sense of proportion, he doesn’t know when to stop. Some call that genius. I call it obstinacy. What does it matter, in a delicate palace such as the Petit Trianon, if Gabriel didn’t put in a single column or window that hadn’t been invented long before? None of those elements were the least bit innovative; everyone had seen them before. That’s precisely why Gabriel was able to use them so expertly.’
Dona Maria Antònia opened her eyes.
‘Don’t you dream of starting work on the house. I don’t like having masons around; they get dust all over the place.’
‘We were talking about operas.’
She threatened him with a mixture of amusement and vexation: ‘Tonet, Tonet, I don’t like to hear about operas.’
‘Now don’t start bringing up things of the past.’
‘Of the past? I’m not sure they are.’
‘Don’t you thing we’re something of the past?’
She fell back into her reverie, mumbling: ‘I know he has repented. Since he has no choice…’