The succession of events began to quicken. On Tuesday after lunch people in costume began to arrive. I have already explained how the Senyor allowed them in due to an unspoken agreement with the late village priest who did not approve of the celebration. The new priest, Don Francesc, was less strict, but the villagers had become used to celebrating the ball at the estate and nobody saw any reason for changing the custom.
It was a beautiful afternoon. From my window, the garden that was turning into a forest announced that spring was soon to come. The sky was blue damask. Such a sky, my Lord, and such a splendid sun. And the stunning nature surrounding us was so indifferent, concerned with nothing but itself…It looked as if summer were already beginning. Bees were flying about and buds were swelling on the tender branches of the trees; the ground would soon be covered in flowers. A bird sang voluptuous notes from an oak and was answered from another faraway tree. Everything—flowers, bees and birds—was rhythmic and harmonious. Yet beneath the apparent harmony lurked deep misfortunes: birds destroyed the insects, sheep devoured the flowers. High above, in the sky, I saw a falcon descend upon a dove. Nature followed its happy course amidst inevitable destruction. Both killer and victim laughed, until the latter’s life was shattered in a shriek of terror. On one such afternoon, on Golgotha, Jesus Christ had a moment of weakness: ‘My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?’
The end was drawing near. Convinced that I could do nothing against fate, I began praying with such deep longing that exhaustion closed my eyes and I fell sound asleep. By the time I awoke, night had fallen. The fields were silent, whereas the house seemed to vibrate with the shrieks of masked figures, shrill as those of swifts in the sky. The courtyard was full of people. Only the old folks and the cripples had stayed in the village. Everybody was wearing a mask, and many were wrapped in sheets and bedspreads in such a way that it was difficult to guess their sex or age, which resulted in many doubtful situations. Those of us who watch carnival from behind the scenes, in other words, from the confessional, are well aware of its dangers. The Senyor never wished to take them into account, unreceptive as he was to everything he did not like. One year, after the party, one silver spoon and two ashtrays were missing, but he made light of the matter, even though it was serious not only because of the value of the objects but also because of the evil implied in any act of theft.
As I walked around the house I observed the disarray that prevailed in the family seat of the Bearns as in a final apotheosis. The fire had gone out in the kitchen and the cook had disappeared. However, I did see two hams on the table and a flask of our best wine, which that morning had been full and was now empty. I went to speak to the Senyor, who was half asleep by the fireplace.
‘Come here, Son,’ he said when he heard me.
I told him about the wine and he shrugged his shoulders.
‘Let them be, let them have a little fun,’ and he fell asleep again.
‘Aren’t you feeling well?’
‘I feel wonderful,’ he replied.
Dona Maria Antònia advanced, fragile and pleased.
‘It sounds as though they’re having quite a time downstairs. Are you asleep, Tonet?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, goodness…I’d never seen anyone answer in their sleep before. Listen to the people at the ball: “Tweet, tweet, tweet…” they sound like birds.’
A group appeared in the doorway shrieking and asking for sweets.
‘Go away,’ said the Senyor with his eyes closed. ‘Go to the kitchen and they’ll give you some sherry.’
Upon hearing that, they rushed downstairs. Some of the people in disguise were already venturing into the private quarters. I noticed that a couple had slipped into the Senyor’s study. They had probably used the spiral staircase that came up from the garden, and I had to intervene to chase them out.
In the courtyard the ball had begun. A tall man, certainly no one from the house, gave out ham and wine to the guests. They had lit a bonfire and the shouts and laughter increased. I was not so much distressed by that scandal and squander as I was by the couples seeking intimacy in dark corners. I returned to the drawing room. Since it was useless to talk to the Senyor, I sat at one end where I could not be seen. Three figures peered through the doorway. They were dressed alike, but one of them, the smallest, could have been a woman. She kept on speaking in a falsetto and took the initiative in a most indecent sort of seduction. From my corner I could only catch half the words they said.
‘What is all that chatter about?’ the Senyor mumbled.
Not even they knew the answer. They were much like the birds I had heard after lunch announcing that spring was soon to come.
‘Come, you must ask me to dance,’ said the one I suspected to be a girl.
‘First we have to be sure that you’re a female,’ said the other two, laughing.
There was silence. Then I heard muffled laughter.
‘Let’s see…Show me your hands. A fine male!’
They laughed again. The Senyor replied in his sleep: ‘A fine male and you’re fondling him…’ he said between clenched teeth. ‘They ought to be ashamed, but they aren’t,’ and he fell back to sleep.
I stood up and they ran off as soon as they saw me. I followed them from a distance. At the bottom of the staircase, someone was trying to hide a silver candle holder in his robes. I grabbed it back from the masked figure. Dona Xima rushed over to me nervously.
‘Joan, where’s Tomeu?’
‘Why do you need him?’
‘Because he’s sworn that he’ll marry me.’
She was extremely agitated. From the very first moment I had thought Dona Xima was disturbed. Now I was convinced that she was mad.
‘Don’t say such things, Senyora.’
‘Let’s go to see my aunt and uncle at once,’ she replied, as she ran off. I did not dare follow her. A few moments later, the Senyor called me, just as I had expected.
‘What is this nonsense Dona Xima tells me, Joan?’
She started screaming and speaking incoherently.
‘You don’t have to shout at me, I’m not deaf,’ the Senyor reminded her. ‘You won’t marry Tomeu because he doesn’t want you and because I would never allow it.’
She went wild. Standing by the fireplace, she spewed forth one insult after another. It seemed as if she were about to have a seizure. ‘He loves me! He told me so!’ she repeated, and she may even have believed it. She had forgotten that she was a poor wretch with half a century behind her. Fate determined that she was to hear the truth with her own ears. In one of her pauses Tomeu’s voice reached us loud and clear, coming up from downstairs: ‘That old woman who came the other day is mad as a hatter. She looks like a witch. Can’t you hear her screaming?’
Dona Xima turned pale; those cruel words had snapped her back into reality. She seemed to hesitate and then she took the box of poisoned chocolates from her breast. I arrived just in time to stop her from putting one in her mouth and forced her to drop them next to the fireplace. During the brief struggle the top had fallen off the box, but I cannot be sure whether it still contained the three chocolates she had shown us the previous afternoon or whether one was already missing. She tried to fight me off with genuine fury, crying out Tomeu’s name between sobs. I held her by the wrists and when she saw that she could not move she started writhing like a soul possessed. When I finally let go, she ran away. We never saw her again. We heard later that she had been picked up by the Civil Guard on the road and taken to the hospital in the City; she was dead by the time they arrived. This is my last memory of Dona Xima, Miquel. Even more ill-fated than the Duke of Gandia, what I lost that ghastly night was not her, but the image of pure beauty, which in my mind will forever be associated with horror.
Dona Maria Antònia walked in slowly.
‘Oh, Tonet, if you look out…All of Bearn is here. Don’t you want to see the ball? Catalineta is crying by the fireplace. Let her cry, let her cry,’ she added with satisfaction. ‘She’ll never serve me breakfast again.’
A moment later she added: ‘Tomorrow I’ll give her this bracelet. Don’t you think I ought to, Tonet? Oh, goodness…I lost my rosary.’
She looked for it on the mantelpiece, and that must have been the moment when she absent-mindedly took one of Dona Xima’s chocolates. A while later she fell into a drowsy state which did not strike me at first. When we saw it was bedtime and she had not moved, we tried to wake her up; she did not respond, and only then did we realize that it was serious. There was no doctor in the village, and the barber, who often made house calls, had broken his leg the day before. It was very late. The last guests had gone and the house was so silent that you could have heard a pin drop. I chose not to wake anyone. I went down to the kitchen to brew some strong coffee and when I returned to the drawing room I found her in her husband’s arms.
‘This is the end, Joan,’ he told me sadly.
We managed to give her a bit of hot coffee and she came to. The Senyor also seemed drowsy, and I attributed it to the shock; however, it was difficult for him to lose his consciousness. In a moment of lucidity, Dona Maria Antònia asked us whether she was dying. She was not the least bit uncomfortable, and felt fine, ‘as if I were in Heaven,’ as she herself put it. We assured her that she had simply fainted (I was trying to convince myself that this was true) and I gave her absolution. She seemed serene and brave. I thought that my words had deceived her, but it was not so. She took the Senyor’s hand in hers and suddenly said: ‘What will become of you, Tonet?’
Her light eyes looked like glass, dry and anxious. We were dumbfounded. She immediately recovered: ‘Well, you’ll amuse yourself with your papers.’
She tried to embrace him and smiled. Death was claiming her. And yet, does death truly exist? It does not according to Ovid, and for the Church it is a ‘transition’. That last embrace reminded me of the poem in the Metamorphoses. For a few seconds her fragile, trembling limbs seemed to become branches, as in the fable of Baucis. Was it the breath of transformation that rushed through them before they lost their human form? Her eyes closed and she was taken to her heavenly rest. Only then did I think to count the chocolates. The box was empty. I looked at my benefactor. He was asleep.
‘Senyor!’ I cried, ‘what has your Honour done?’
‘Nothing,’ he murmured with his eyes closed.
‘Dona Xima had left three chocolates in this box.’
He did not reply. What had happened while I was in the kitchen? Undoubtedly the Senyor, seeing the state his wife was in and knowing she had lost her memory of recent events, had come to the same conclusion I had and went to count the chocolates. He must have been deeply distressed to see that some were missing, and being the pagan that he was, he had chosen suicide over the loneliness of an existence he lacked the strength to face at his age. I recalled a conversation we had a few days before, as we walked through the woods: ‘I think that with the pages I’ll give you today, the Memoirs will virtually be finished. Everything has been said in the best possible way: I don’t know how to write any better. When you publish them’—never, Miquel, did it occur to him that I might not do so—‘you will naturally find some oversights in my style and perhaps a few grammatical liberties and transgressions. Be careful when you correct them, Son. Remember that I’m not a scholar nor a writer in the proper sense of the word, but rather a man who had no children,’—and upon saying this he squeezed my arm tenderly—‘and who would like to survive for some time by perpetuating all that he loved. I have made a particular effort to portray Dona Maria Antònia, describing her charming childhood, her maturity full of talent and the serenity and mental disorder of her last stages, which at times brought back to life the eight-year old girl I had played with as a child. That’s what I intended, and to do so I have at times had to sacrifice grammar and morals in exchange for accuracy. You don’t have my permission,’ he added, laughing, ‘to change more solecisms than those concerning spelling. I’m not interested in the problems of z’s and s’s. As far as syntax is concerned, it is mine, the one that best meets my needs. All in all, I consider the work finished. I know the money I gave you will be enough for its publication, which shouldn’t be luxurious, but simply correct. Publish it in Paris.’
He was sad, and I guessed the reason why. He confirmed my suspicion without my having to ask.
‘Now my life no longer has a purpose.’
‘You have the Senyora,’ I told him.
The Senyora no longer existed, and the Memoirs had been completed. The idea of his suicide came back to me.
‘Senyor,’ I said, ‘the box is empty. If your Honour has eaten one of these chocolates, you must confess this very instant. Your eternal salvation depends upon it. Did your Honour try to commit suicide?’
He did not open his eyes, but it seemed as if he smiled faintly.
‘Did your Honour eat one of the chocolates that were above the fireplace? If you can’t answer me, make a sign with your hand.’
He gave a hesitant wave that could have been interpreted as a denial and I felt there was hope after all.
‘So you confess that you didn’t try to kill yourself?’
This time his hand denied it more clearly.
‘Do you ask God’s forgiveness for all your sins, do you repent and authorize me to omit from your Memoirs all that the Council of Moralists considers pertinent for the better service of God and the benefit of your soul!’
I said no more because he had lost consciousness. He slept until dawn, when he opened his eyes and momentarily recovered his speech. I wanted him to confess, and as he had done before, he referred me to his work.
‘My writings, Joan, are my confession. I’m not afraid. God is good.’
I remember the tone of his words as if it were now.
‘Your Honour’s life has been so beautiful, despite your mistakes. Repent and ask for forgiveness.’
‘I suppose,’ he interrupted, sitting up, ‘I am guilty of having envied Jacob Collera.’
He wavered and I held him. He was dead.