Around noon it started raining again and after lunch we sought the comfort of the fireplace, where the Senyors soon fell asleep. I opened my breviary and began to pray. I lifted my head now and again to listen to the silence, that marvellous silence that could be shattered by misfortune at any moment. ‘If you have riches,’ says Thomas à Kempis, ‘do not be proud of them, as they do not last; only God is everlasting.’ I was waiting for the storm to break; I was sure it had to happen and was not the least bit surprised when a voice called up from downstairs: ‘Don Joan, you have a visitor.’
I left the drawing room. Downstairs stood Dona Xima in a pitiful state. She was soaked to the skin; her shoes were covered in mud. She was much thinner than when I had seen her in Paris outside Saint Roch. At first sight, her thinness made her look young and graceful, but in fact she was a wreck. Her face was covered in herpetic red blotches. When she saw me she tried to smile.
‘You didn’t expect this visit, did you, Joan? How are my aunt and uncle?’
I was dumbfounded. I finally managed to say: ‘You’ve arrived on foot…’
She gave me an inappropriately mischievous glance, as if she still considered herself a desirable woman.
‘I thought I’d get some exercise,’ she said. ‘I left the horses in the village so the coachmen wouldn’t get wet. I love the rain!’ She hummed:
Il pleut, il pleut, bergère,
presse tes blancs moutons…’
Her face was all made up. She spoke incoherently and gesticulated, twisting her mouth as if she suffered from a nervous disorder. Her fickleness and her lack of common sense were precisely what had made her fashionable in the French society of the Second Empire twenty years earlier, when she was beautiful and fascinating. To that extent do our senses lead us astray. When she laughed, her mouth twitched even more and her expression became downright painful.
‘Please be so kind as to wait a moment. I’ll tell the Senyors you’re here.’
I found Don Toni awake and he looked at me with curiosity. I made a gesture asking him to speak softly, pointing to the Senyora.
‘No, no. She might as well know. What could Xima want now? Maria Antònia, Xima’s downstairs.’
The Senyora sat bolt upright in her chair. I witnessed the transformation: her skin turned the colour of earth and the muscles in her face relaxed.
‘Oh, Tonet,’ she said in a shrill voice, ‘what will we do now?’
‘Whatever you say.’
‘This is horrible! It’s the worst thing that could happen to us. I’d already heard that she was trying to pull something on you…’
‘But, dear…’
‘Everything was so nice and peaceful…In this house, now that we never leave these mountains…’
Her eyes had filled with tears. The Senyor looked at her and then at me without understanding what had happened. He had spent his entire life trying to eliminate every marvellous element from his existence and now the marvellous had taken revenge by presenting a conclusion he could no longer understand. Why had Dona Maria Antònia had that premonition? It was obvious that fate had finally caught up with them. Only God is Eternal; the rest comes to an end, and the end had arrived. The small, fragile woman went over to her husband’s side.
‘Does she want to take you back to Paris?’ she asked softly.
He kissed her tenderly.
‘Joan, tell her to leave. Did she come on foot?’
‘Yes, Senyor. In this rain…’
Dona Maria Antònia stopped crying. She had recovered her countenance and her concern for the practical aspects of life.
‘On foot? Then what does she need all those carriages and liveries for?’
‘Carriages?’ said the Senyor. ‘She’s a pauper now. Didn’t you know?’
‘Xima, a pauper? No, I didn’t know. Weren’t we the ones who were penniless? What happened to her?’
‘We’ve talked about it a thousand times: the Communards burned down her house, the Emperor died…’
‘Poor Xima, I had no idea! Did you know, Joan? Is she wet?’
‘Soaked to the skin.’
‘Well, that’s just terrible,’ she said sharply. ‘Send her in so she can get warm.’
‘Do you want her to come up?’ the Senyor inquired.
‘What else? Send up a bottle of sherry and a piece of ensaïmada. A pauper? Such a beautiful, elegant lady…Oh, my God!’
Suddenly her sadness disappeared and she put her hand on her husband’s shoulder.
‘You’ve always had good taste, dear,’ she said.
I sent Dona Xima in and retired to say my prayers. I could not concentrate, and when about half an hour later I returned to see if they needed anything, they were chatting contentedly by the fire. In front of them was a little table with some pieces of ensaïmada and glasses. They were talking about Paris.
‘Is that famous restaurant still there? I can’t remember…What was it called, Tonet? It was near the Louvre. Don’t you know which I mean? We ordered pheasant and they brought it in with all its feathers….’
‘The Restaurant Véfour, in the Palais Royal,’ the Senyor replied.
‘They had very handsome twin waiters.’
‘Twins? Goodness, no! They were just dressed the same.’
‘Dressed and combed the same way, in tails. Do they still serve there?’
Dona Xima laughed with a glass of sherry in her hand.
‘If they were really that handsome, they probably serve some purpose.’
Dona Maria Antònia did not seem to understand her niece’s cynical reply. Suddenly she asked: ‘Tell me, is the Emperor dead?’
Dona Xima was taken aback. The Senyor smiled and came to her rescue.
‘You must be out of work now. You were his secretary, weren’t you?’
‘Thank you, Tonet,’ Dona Xima said softly, and added in a louder tone: ‘I handled his Spanish correspondence.’
‘What I still don’t understand,’ the Senyora said, ‘is why you went to Paris when you were so young.’
Dona Xima twisted her mouth in a gesture that tried to be a smile. Suddenly she stood up and came over to me as if she were going to tell me something, but she quickly sat down again. The Senyor asked how the Emperor had died.
‘He wasn’t able to bear the defeat.’
‘What defeat are you referring to?’
She fluttered her eyelashes the way she had in her youth.
‘I don’t understand, Uncle Tonet.’
‘What happened to that twenty-year old dragoon?’
Dona Xima hummed:
‘Il repose au Père Lachaise
par un prix exorbitant.’
‘He died?’
‘Who died?’ the Senyor asked.
‘One of Louis Napoleon’s assistants.’
Dona Xima wiped away a tear.
‘And Campo Formio?’
‘He rebuilt his fortune. Now he’s the leader of the Socialist Party. He won’t have anything to do with me.’
‘And what about Offenbach? You had a good voice. Didn’t you sing in operettas?’
‘I’ve lost my voice. I’ve also lost my figure, my youth…’
Dona Maria Antònia looked at her affectionately: ‘But you’re just a child, Xima.’
‘You see me in a good light.’
‘But you’re just a little girl. So beautiful and so elegant…’
Her niece burst out crying in hysterical sobs.
‘Stop, Aunt Maria. I’m finished; everyone’s abandoned me. I should have died long ago.’
‘There, there, child…’
When she calmed down she told them about her situation with some coherence. In the City she had been thrown out of the inn because she could not pay her bills. Her acquaintances no longer greeted her in the street. The night before, she had slept in a confessional in the Cathedral.
‘Goodness gracious,’ said Dona Maria Antònia, ‘I didn’t know it was possible! You didn’t even have enough cèntims for an inn? Have you forgotten who you are? Don’t you have anything at all? You had some jewels…’
‘Yes, Aunt Maria Antònia. I used to spend all my money on diamonds. I’d been told they were a good investment.’
‘Well, then, sell your diamonds.’
‘I sold them a long time ago.’
The last few years had been horrible for her; her only comfort had been the thought of suicide. For that reason she never travelled without a little box with three poisoned chocolates that had been given to her by some criminal. With those chocolates, she explained, one could never die of hunger, because upon eating them one fell asleep and never woke again.
‘Smell them, Aunt Maria Antònia. The chocolate must be delicious.’
She laughed as she showed them to the Senyors. It almost looked as though she were offering them. Dona Maria Antònia took one, and I, without thinking, grabbed her hand.
‘I don’t intend to kill myself, Joan,’ she said. ‘I feel fine in the world of the living.’
Dona Xima was pleased again, for no apparent reason, and hummed a song. Suddenly she started discussing business. A doctor had proposed that they form a partnership to sell a cure for tuberculosis that consisted of injecting horse’s blood into the patients, but first one had to give the horses the disease. One needed capital for that.
‘Who is this doctor?’ the Senyor asked.
‘Well, I don’t really think he’s a doctor, but he’s very knowledgeable.’
‘Giving horses a disease…’ said Dona Maria Antònia. ‘Such noble, necessary animals.’
‘But it’s in order to heal people, Aunt Maria Antònia. If I only had ten thousand duros…’
‘I don’t like the idea,’ the Senyor decreed. ‘Can’t you think of anything else?’
‘Yes. I could open an inn.’
‘That’s better. A good inn, with a bathtub and everything. We could help you out, couldn’t we, Maria Antònia?’
‘Certainly. But I do think you should only take in ladies who are travelling alone.’
Don Toni pointed out that inns usually take in both ladies and gentlemen.
‘In that case, it’s out of the question,’ his wife retorted. ‘Xima has always been a good girl and I wouldn’t like her to be criticized now.’
Uncle and niece glanced at each other. Dona Maria Antònia continued: ‘Ladies travelling alone, only if one knows who they are and where they come from…Provided they go to church…’
‘If we start making so many demands, there’s no knowing how things will go. Travellers don’t like…’
‘In that case they can go elsewhere; we don’t need them. There’s no reason why Xima should put up with any sort of riffraff. She can stay with us and keep us company.’
Dona Xima kissed her hand.
‘Oh, thank you! But it can’t be. You would always remember…’
‘Hush,’ said the Senyor softly, ‘I think she’s forgotten.’
‘But didn’t you say you were penniless?’ her aunt insisted. ‘Besides, I think a young girl oughtn’t to run an inn. Isn’t that so? We’ll ask Joan. Don Joan, I mean,’ she corrected herself; ‘We call him Joan because we’ve known him since he was a boy, you know.’
Despite her madness, Dona Xima stared at me with what was left of her worldly impertinence.
‘Don’t worry, Aunt Maria Antònia, to me he will always be Don Joan.’
I felt my blood rushing to my face and stared her back in the eye.
‘I was once the swineherd of Bearn, Senyora.’
The Senyor looked up from his outdated newspaper to reprimand me: ‘Don’t be arrogant, Joan. There are certain kinds of humility that I don’t like at all.’
‘We are all the product of our actions,’ said Dona Maria Antònia.
‘Well, well. That isn’t entirely true either,’ the Senyor replied, and hid behind his newspaper again. A moment later I heard him murmur:
‘What in the devil’s name is this? It says the King went hunting, and he’s been dead for years!’