“Those were the times! I remember those receptions, the time I entered and they took me for the Queen of. I don’t remember what country, but I know that they took me for a queen. Those were the times!”
She referred often to having lost a great deal of money and then I fancied that the row of relatives looked obviously alarmed.
Dr. José de los Rios, who took me there and who knew her rather well and had assisted her in one or two nervous attacks, made an attempt at a diagnosis.
“You know,” he said to me, “it is this atmosphere in which she lives. Everything here has remained stagnant, everything here belongs to the day before yesterday and she must refer to it. The windows are always shut and the outside air never comes in. Everything here would probably evaporate if it did. Even Tia Mariquita herself. She could not possibly stand the outside air. It would kill her. I have forbidden her to try it if she wants to keep alive. When she goes out she must do so in an old-fashioned carriage entirely closed and with as many curtains and cushions inside as possible.”
“Do you believe it is as bad as that?”
“Absolutely; certain atmospheres can prove deadly. Look at her secretary. The poor fellow suffers from a persistent cough, which has been treated time and again without results. That cough has become entangled in this house and it is impossible to eradicate it. It probably dwelled in this place for who knows how long and he has inherited it. He believes that he gets a different cough each time, but I have persuaded him that it is the same old cough with short intervals during which it takes a vacation and disappears among the draperies and then comes back to him. It is a persistent cough, an ineludible cough that has got hold of this house and of him and has taken root in both. A traditional cough entrapped inside these walls. Everything is so padded here that the cough does not even resound and therefore will never lose its energy. These traditional coughs are common in Spain.”
Dr. de los Rios was a strange physician. Listening to him I was often tempted to believe that medicine was almost a science.
Tia Mariquita was reciting something and accompanying it with a waltz played softly on the piano. When she finished amid the general applause she confessed with lowered eyes that the poetry was her own. Then she went on and sang an air from some opera, and interrupting herself with all the abruptness of a true genius, she exclaimed ecstatically to her audience:
“Although literature has always been my passion, music is my weakness, that is why I love operas so.”
Someone said something about operas but I was observing Tia Mariquita and did not listen. She answered:
“Oh, yes, I heard Gayarre the divine as they called him, and since then I cannot think of Il Trovatore or Rigoletto without the tears coming into my eyes. He visited me, we spoke of music, and he told me that he had never met such an understanding person before. He stood there, right where you are.”
Everybody looked at a gentleman who had an air of suffering from chronic colic and who was standing by the piano. A pensive expression came into his face to intensify his distressing aspect. Tia Mariquita went on:
“Yes, he stood right there and he sang his famous air ‘Spirito Gentile’ and I accompanied him. At that time I could play; I am nothing but a shadow of what I was then.” And Tia Mariquita went on to explain that when they finished they were both crying like children and he exclaimed in a rapture:
“You are an inspiration, it is a privilege to be accompanied by you. Today I have discovered the true ‘Spirito Gentile,’ and I shall never sing it with anybody else.”
And Tia Mariquita added:
“He was so gallant! Poor Gayarre, he died soon after and never sang it again. Those were the times!”
The gentleman who stood where Gayarre had sung said:
“And do you remember that air from La Forza del Destino he used to sing? Trala, lara, lara. do you remember it?”
“Of course, I do.” Tia Mariquita played something else by some other composer, showing the whites of her eyes while vocalizing and curling her fingers, without paying attention to the puzzled expression on the man’s face who could not recognize the air from La Forza del Destino and who followed her arpeggios and scales with a twisted mouth. He was about to protest but already everybody was echoing:
“Delightful, delightful.!”
And he had to content himself with standing where Gayarre had stood.
After that the chocolate was served and everybody pounced on it with eagerness and resolution. The younger nephews and nieces, however, were held back by a fusillade of parental looks and Tia Mariquita taking a platter went from one to the other giving each a round flat cake and repeating:
“El bizcocho de la Tia Mariquita. “
From a distance she looked exactly like a priest delivering communion.
At this moment another person made his presence noticed by a deep cough. It was the secretary of Tia Mariquita, a fellow by the name of Cendreras whose face always looked as if he had just stepped out of a steam bath.
Cendreras shuffled across the carpeted floor without making the slightest noise. He was in slippers and wore a smoking jacket. Without saluting anyone he helped himself to some chocolate and biscuits and mixed in the general conversation as if he had just left the room a minute before, coughing intermittently.
Once when a cough sounded particularly strong, I looked at Cendreras although the cough seemed to come from no particular direction.
“It was not he that time,” said Dr. de los Rios. “That was the house coughing.”
I turned to Dr. de los Rios.
“Yes,” he continued. “All this is absurd. Do you see all these hungry people? They all have been influenced by this environment and this fantastic woman. They do not exist, they are but shadows of her, they are the perfect family as seen from the viewpoint of one of its individuals. Just a shadow, something to give the individual a relative position socially. They are waiting impatiently for her death, for the day when she will shed her identity and her inheritance among them. Then they will live, or at least exist.”
I signaled Dr. de los Rios to lower his voice.
“Don’t worry, they can’t hear. They live on a different plane and do not exist in our world.”
In effect he was speaking in a loud voice and yet nobody seemed to hear him and Dr. de los Rios went on talking to me.
From him I gathered that the only person in the whole family with any sense was her husband. He had a good sense of humor, too. He was the only one who had found a practical use for all those draperies and rugs and cushions. When he had money to spare, he changed a bill and then scattered the change all over the house, with the result that when he was out of funds one could always see him down on all fours, looking under a chair or a bed, shaking a portiere here and lifting a cushion there. In that manner he gathered pocket money. According to Dr. de los Rios, he never was much around the house, he was outside and traveling most of the time and that is why he kept his sense.
“He is a curious type,” Dr. de los Rios finished. “It is very entertaining to listen to him. He has had an active and adventuresome life. You will like him when you meet him.”
“What is his name? Because I only know this lady as Tia Mariquita.”
“His name is Olózaga. I have known him for a very long time. As a matter of fact, I knew him long before he married Tia Mariquita.”