On Shrove Sunday, after what for me had been a very agitated week, misfortune started to rear its ugly head: somebody had spread the news that Dona Xima had just arrived in the City. With the excuse that I was going to see the priest, I ran down to the village. It was raining and the paths were like rivers. I spoke to almost everyone in the village only to end up more confused than I had started. Some travelling merchants had brought the news and vanished. Nobody knew exactly what village they had left for. Their stories had been distorted: two old women claimed that a lady who was related to the Senyors had come begging for money; others asserted she was the Queen of France.
I returned in distress. Despite the confusion, it was obvious that it all referred to Dona Xima. I could not sleep all night long. What would she be like now? In Paris I had dreamt of her in different forms, before she was embodied in a ravaged woman in front of the church of Saint Roch. ‘I owe twenty-four francs for the room,’ she told me. She was wearing an old pair of shoes with crooked heels. I had seen lettuce leaves peeping out of her cloth bag. The Queen of France…a beggar…It could only be her. And assuming she had decided to come back to Mallorca, it was obvious that she would try to see the Senyors. Now past fifty, it was time for her to play the part of the penitent. Yet did I have a right to assume that her repentance would necessarily be fake? One of the greatest poets of our times* wrote in a painfully sceptical poem:
que después que se extinguen las pasiones
yo he visto sorprendentes conversiones
a la moral y a la virtud cristianas.*
All of Campoamor’s wit cannot prove that there are no truly repentant sinners, touched by the grace of God. That this divine grace tends to appear when the mortal graces have dwindled offers a subject that is easy prey to the irony of unbelievers, whereas those of us who have faith know that the flesh is ephemeral and only the soul is everlasting.
On Monday the weather was fine. The sun was as bright as in summer. I was calm when I awoke; my anguish had lodged itself so deeply within me that nothing could make me lose my composure. I entrusted myself to God’s will and opened the window to look out. Catalina and Tomeu were talking in the courtyard.
‘The Senyora says we should dress up as bride and groom,’ she said.
‘You and your big mouth,’ Tomeu replied. ‘Now the Senyor knows that I was planning to pull a prank on him. I was embarrassed.’
‘Do you really think he wouldn’t have recognized you?’
‘You can be sure!’
‘Watch out! He might have thought you were a pretty girl!’
‘Pretty or not, I would have got some money for sweets out of him.’
‘With those hands and those shoulders of yours…I don’t know. At least you’ve got a nice waistline.’
‘Get off. Go away.’
I remembered that Catalineta had mysteriously confided in the Senyora about Tomeu’s plans.
‘No, I don’t want him to play pranks on the Senyor,’ Dona Maria Antònia had replied. ‘That’s the last thing we need, now that he’s calmed down. Why doesn’t he dress up as a groom? You put on my wedding dress and the two of you take a walk around the courtyard. I’ll look at you from the window.’
Those words, uttered with the best of intentions, were slightly irresponsible. The Senyor, who knew better, had taken the farmboy aside and scolded him in his own way. ‘Be careful with Catalineta. Sooner or later, I find out about everything around here, and I don’t want to hear about it.’
‘I swear…’
‘Don’t swear. You’re such a scatterbrain…You can’t even remember to shut the door.’
That was a tacit authorization for all kinds of transgressions, even though it was true that Tomeu lacked the wits to see it as such. However, he did have an instinct for doing things without permission, and more than once I had found myself in the position of having to tell the Senyor, who, as he had just said, preferred not to hear about such matters.
Hours later, unwittingly, he was forced to hear everything, because it is not enough to close your eyes before evil to avoid its influence. We were sitting by the fireplace when the Senyora walked in with Catalineta.
‘Let’s see if you recognize this bride who’s come to visit. Take a good look at her.’
She looked beautiful. In the white dress, with her eyes lowered, she was a living image of purity. The orange blossoms in her hair were no finer than her skin. The Senyor stared at her for a moment and then said harshly: ‘I think that train’s too long.’
‘It’s my dress, Tonet,’ Dona Maria Antònia retorted. ‘Why, don’t you remember?’
‘How could I forget, my dear? Where’s Tomeu?’
The girl lowered her eyes even more. The Senyor was suddenly amused.
‘What if you lost your groom?’
‘I don’t need one.’
‘Don’t say that. I happen to know…’
Shame and anger brought her to the verge of tears. Dona Maria Antònia interjected: ‘Don’t embarrass her, Tonet.’
‘Don’t embarrass her? Why doesn’t she do things right, then?’ he said under his breath.
She burst out crying.
‘See, Tonet? You always have to say the unkindest things! I don’t know why you had to go and pick on this poor girl.’
‘Let it be, then. If I must give a warning, it will be in English: Be good, and if it is not possible, be careful.’ He left the room. Catalineta, on the verge of a nervous fit, was sobbing out loud.
‘I didn’t understand what he said, Joan,’ Dona Maria Antònia said. ‘Did you?’
‘Yes, Senyora,’ I told her sadly, ‘but I can’t translate it just now.’
She started to lose her patience.
‘Stop crying, now. Why are you crying if you didn’t even understand what he said?’
‘But I did!’
‘Well, what did he say?’
‘He said he knew about it, and it’s all a lie.’
‘Catalineta, what are you talking about? What’s a lie?’
The girl was stamping her feet like a little child. The crown of orange blossoms had fallen to the ground.
‘What the Senyor said…it can’t be true!’
‘How would you know what is and what isn’t true, you silly girl?’
At that moment Tomeu came in. I do not know whether he had heard something, but he looked rather shocked.
‘Come over here, Tomeu,’ the Senyora said.
The bride screamed in the midst of a nervous fit: ‘Don’t mention him! I don’t want to see him!’
Dona Maria Antònia turned to her, twisting her neck. Fragile and small, she looked like a porcelain doll.
‘Well, well, what sort of manners are these?’ she said, calmly. ‘Is this what you’ve dressed up as a bride for? Joan,’ she added, ‘take this little mule down to the stable and send up the cook. She won’t see me for three days. And she’ll never serve me breakfast again.’
It was true, God knows, that she would never serve the Senyora breakfast again. I sent the girl to the kitchen and then took Tomeu aside to question him. I was slightly nervous.
‘Speak up. I think you owe us an explanation. What are these lies about?’
The Senyor was staring at us from his room with a smile on his face. Dona Maria Antònia had vanished.
‘I haven’t done anything wrong,’ Tomeu mumbled.
‘Who says you have?’
‘I swear…’
‘Very well,’ the Senyor interjected. ‘Tell us what it is you swear.’
‘I…’
The Senyor seemed amused.
‘Question him, Joan. I’d like to know…’
I asked the question directly.
‘What happened between you and Catalineta?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Well, then, why was she crying?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You haven’t the faintest idea.’
‘No.’
The Senyor sat down by the fire.
‘The fact is, Joan,’ he said as he stoked the fire, ‘that this idiot may not even know. Just in case, I think we ought to marry them. Marry them, Joan.’
‘But…’
‘Can’t you see they’ve had Easter before Palm Sunday?’
There was a strange, disturbing glint of mischief in his eye. He started writing things down in a notebook and waved to us to leave. I came across his notes later on, but they had been crossed out in such a way that I could decipher nothing but a few syllables that seemed to spell the name Catalineta.
I took Tomeu to the room by the landing in the hope of finding out the facts, but this attempt was no more successful than the first.
‘Very well,’ I finally said. ‘Do you want to marry her?’
‘She says we haven’t got any clothes,’ was his reply.
I was horrified to be faced with such stupidity, such innocence or such evil.
‘And what if you have a child?’
‘Maybe we won’t.’
‘Aha! Then you mean…’
But he meant nothing, absolutely nothing. I looked at him. He was handsome, strong, dark, and bold. One curl fell across his forehead. As his beauty increased, his intelligence only seemed to diminish. (A fortnight later the doctor from Inca cleared up any possible doubts and I married them as soon as I could.) In the midst of our exchange, the Senyora walked in.
‘Why didn’t you get dressed up?’ she said. ‘Oh, goodness, I don’t know how you dare look so shabby in my presence. Now I understand why Catalineta didn’t even want to hear your name. Go away and don’t come back until you look presentable.’
After these words, proof of the arbitrariness of human criteria, she proposed that we play a game of cards.
‘I think,’ she said, ‘that the Senyor has been cheating lately. I can’t trust him, and the worst part is that he always has an explanation and tells you that what’s black is white. I know him all too well, better than you could possibly imagine. Once, when we were children, he kissed me. He was very naughty. I have never told a soul. We were in a dark corridor.’
The Senyor, dozing off near the fire, appeared not to be listening, but mumbled in his sleep. ‘Corridors are made for kissing…’
She continued: ‘He often came to the town house at Bearn to play with me. He was short, dark and naughty. I don’t know what I fell in love with, Joan. Naturally, ever since we were born, our families had decided that we’d be married. Their interests were so much a part of it…They said that if we didn’t marry we might have an awful lawsuit and end up penniless. Isn’t that ridiculous, going to court to end up penniless? But you know that many noblemen do so. Besides, it was only natural that the house at Bearn and the estate should be reunited. I don’t know why, now that I think of it: once we’re dead, with no children…But then again, who else could I have married? We’ve had a good life. In all these years, we’ve had no real misfortunes. He’s very good, particularly now. God always knows how to work things out, doesn’t He? He makes us good when we’re old so we can go to Heaven. I think Tonet will go to Heaven, don’t you agree? What do you think?’
It was the first time that in speaking to me she called him by his name instead of referring to him as the Senyor. She gave me an anxious glance; she needed to be comforted. It would have been a crime not to do so.
‘The Senyor is good.’
She was only senile every now and then.
‘I know,’ she replied, ‘but we all sin. Do you think he has repented of his mistakes.’
That question tortured me.
‘Yes, Senyora,’ I replied.
Her face lit up with happiness.
‘See? Now everything’s erased and we can die in peace. All I hope is that God will let us stay together.’
A moment earlier the Senyor had been nodding off in his armchair, but for some reason I suddenly wondered whether he was only pretending to sleep. I pointed to him inquisitively and Dona Maria Antònia smiled.
‘Can you hear us, Tonet?’
He snored faintly. It was obvious that he was awake.
‘He can’t hear us,’ said Dona Maria Antònia. ‘Today I finished a novena to Jesus Christ for a peaceful death, because we probably won’t live much longer.’
I replied that they were in good health and that they could still live for many years.
‘May God’s will be done,’ she said. Then, in a transition that seemed brusque and yet was not so because it merely reflected an inner rhythm, she added: ‘I certainly don’t work much. I don’t do a thing. All I do is play cards, which is a vice, and walk around the garden and stare out of the balcony…Lord knows how long ago I started to crochet a bedspread! I think it was when Tonet and I made our peace again.’—She said Tonet for a second time.—‘I wonder if I’ll get it finished before I die.’
She did not. Never again did she take it in her hands, but God granted her what she desired: the death of the righteous and never to see her husband’s grave.