“No, that was a real bullet.”
Madame Gerard and her daughter were taking their leave. La Torre and the young man offered to accompany them. Paco and Julieta met at the door. For a moment they were alone; the others had preceded them. She looked at him with scrutiny and he returned her gaze very carefully wrapped in a cynical expression, holding the door open for her.
My applause startled Garcia and also the cashier who was the only other person besides us still in the restaurant: “I say Bravo! like your characters. You certainly got it cursi, boy! Bull’s-eye cursi.” I poured the rest of the arrack into the cups and held mine up: “To the great cursi art which in your hands becomes a science or vice versa.”
Garcia looked doubtful and then decided to take it as a compliment and wash it down with the arrack, but he said nothing. Probably he wanted to save his mind for the reading:
La Torre, the painter, was a tall, broad fellow with an abundant mane, a slightly drooping mustache and an impertinent air that verged on the obscene. He was supposed to be as skilled with the sword as with the brush, perhaps more so, and sought duels for the mere publicity of it. The elasticity of his conscience may be appreciated from the following incident.
One night at the opera, he had laid his cloak on the chair in front of his. The occupant came and claimed the chair, asking La Torre politely to remove his cloak. This occupant had had the misfortune of courting the lady who was La Torre’s model at the time.
La Torre answered something very insulting and the other man slapped his face.
La Torre scratched his cheek very ostentatiously and then selected a card with utmost care. He carried his insolence so far as wiping some imaginary dust from it and then handed it to his aggressor.
The other man knew nothing about duels and consequently, that night, he visited a fencing master. As there was no time in one lesson to teach much, the fencing master taught him only one resource pass.
La Torre entered the fencing academy right after his opponent had left and inquired from the master which pass he had taught
News like that travels fast and the master knew that La Torre was going to fight the other man next morning and said that his honor did not allow him to betray a professional secret.
La Torre disregarded the objection. He took out his wallet and said: “I did not ask the statutes of your profession. I simply asked you to tell me what pass you taught that young imbecile. However, I take it that you are a caballero and that is worth something, but somehow I have forgotten the price.”
And the fencing master told him.
The next morning La Torre met his opponent in a secluded spot in El Retiro. They crossed swords and the pass the poor fellow had learned was his passport to oblivion.
When La Torre saw the young man lying on the grass, bleeding and very pale, he recalled his face. He murmured: “Serrano scared you with a well-aimed shot for the same indiscretion, but you went too far with me.”
It had been a gentlemen’s affair.
Since that time many serious people called La Torre an assassin when they spoke of him and refused to shake hands with him. Some would get up and depart when he entered a place where they were. This seemed to please La Torre beyond words.
It was at the studio of La Torre that Paco Serrano met Clotilde Bonafé one afternoon.
Clotilde had been posing for La Torre all afternoon but he had painted very little. She was reclining on a couch when Paco rang the bell.
There was some confusion and Clotilde started to hide. Her husband was no less a person than Don Melitón Bonafé, the famous Bonafé, a ferocious congressman who boasted a beard like a bib. He had introduced the scola di bravura in the Spanish congress, and when swept by inspiration and eloquence, his voice thundered, his white hair and beard shook threateningly and people compared him to Moses. At such moments he was irresistible. It is said that once, while talking about some taxes, the two lions at the entrance of the building walked wearily away to the zoological gardens and there talked two other lions into taking their post.
As has been recorded, when the bell rang, Clotilde tried to hide, but La Torre, who was fond of theatrical situations, stopped her with authority:
“Why hide, my dear? If it is your husband, I will introduce him to you and then kill him. If it is somebody else, they are not going to find out anything they don’t know already. They will have to take me as I am. I am never ashamed of anything I do.”
“But I might be ashamed.”
His eyes outlined his own figure on a big mirror: “What? Don’t be such a donkey,” and indignantly he flung the door open.
When Paco entered La Torre exclaimed sadly: “Of course; it had to be the one person that would not be shocked. Next time wear a big white beard, Serrano.”
Paco looked tired and showed a great deal of white at the temples. He sat on the couch close to the naked figure of Clotilde.
La Torre, in a light jacket and balloon corduroy trousers, was pouring some drinks while relating an anecdote which concerned the respectable person of Don Melitón Bonafé.
It seems that La Torre had painted Clotilde as Mary Magdalene, very lightly clad, and the picture appeared among others in an exhibition.
Congressman Bonafé saw it. He liked it immensely and he bought it on the spot. The picture found a place of honor in the marital bedroom at the head of the solid, methodic bed, and Don Melitón praised it constantly. Next to Saint Joseph, Mary Magdalene had been his favorite character in religious history, according to La Torre.
On the money from the purchase of the picture, Clotilde and La Torre had a noisy time, but the painter never forgave the inspired congressman for not discovering the likeness between the picture and his wife. It involved a bad implication for his art and besides had robbed the situation of possibilities. He contented himself with calling him a bearded ox.
La Torre, having finished his anecdote, handed a glass of brandy to Paco and held another one for Clotilde: “But listen, Paco, you must have seen her husband at the congress.”
“I never notice anything at the congress. I always go to sleep there from the moment I enter until they wake me up when the session is over. It is the only opportunity a good deputy gets to catch up on sleep.”
“But with the noise he makes, you must have noticed him. He must have awakened you sometimes.”
“Is that the one?” Paco laughed loudly and La Torre caught up with him. “I should have known it. He has interfered with my sleep more than once and I wish I could even matters with him.” His hand drifted to Clotilde’s thigh.
“You will.” He offered the drink to Clotilde. “Drink this one. It will brace you up.” He spoke to Paco: “You know? This woman is played out today. When she arrived this afternoon she pleaded exhaustion. I have never known her to be like that before. Perhaps it is because her husband arrived yesterday.”
“Did he bore her, or amuse her?”
“You had better ask her that”
Clotilde told them: “He got back last night from Paris where he had been for a week on business and. ”
“And he was not as old as you thought,” they chorused.
“Not a bit,” she cried in a pampered voice. “He. ”
“Now, now!” I shook an admonishing finger. “All right, all right,” and Garcia hummed quickly through a couple of pages: “It wasn’t so much, see?” He continued:
“With that big beard, too. The rogue!”
“I think we will all have to grow beards, La Torre, to save face before this competition.” He drank the brandy at one swallow and handed the glass back to La Torre for a refill. “But doesn’t he know anything about this arrangement between you two?”