“Where did you meet him?”
“Long ago, in the Philippine Islands when they were Spanish. I practiced medicine there for the first time. I was quite young then and all I knew was how to administer quinine by the barrel.”
“One has to take a lot of that in the colonies, I understand.”
“It depends to some degree on whom the colonizer is, and where the colonies are located.”
Dr. de los Rios turned the conversation of his own accord upon Olózaga.
According to him, Olózaga was a strong personality, and Tia Mariquita was but one of the fanciful turns of his life. All that family of hers was nothing but a stage setting of wax figures without life of their own, to keep things going while the strange fascination of Olózaga’s presence was missing. And Dr. de los Rios added:
“Sometimes when I see all this I fancy him behind the scenes, laughing mockingly. Some people say that he is wicked. I like him. After all, these are nothing but wax figures.”
I remembered then that Dr. de los Rios had already spoken once before about Señor Olózaga, when he was going to introduce me to Tia Mariquita. He had said:
“She is a colorful aspect of his life.”
By this time the chocolate was finished and Tia Mariquita announced that she was going to read a play of her own composition. Dr. de los Rios excused himself saying that he had to call on a patient and, as I felt rather lost there without him, I decided to go also.
Tia Mariquita saw us to the door talking with Dr. de los Rios about her nerves. In the corridor, where we had to squeeze our way between trinkets and odd furniture, she stopped before a console and assumed a theatrical pose worthy of Sarah Bernhardt.
“This is the grave of my child. There I keep all his little clothes and the things he used before he died and was cast into the eternal sea.” She staggered a bit effectively and laid her hands on our shoulders as if we were two supporting characters before a large audience: true Sarah Bernhardt style.
“Never mention this to Olózaga.” She always addressed him by his second name. “He does not want to be reminded of it. It kills him, it breaks his heart. It has been the tragedy of our lives. It was not our lot to see our heir grow.” She pointed again at the console:
“This is a very old piece of furniture. It comes from the Orient and belonged to an ancestor of Olózaga, a Chinese prince whose only daughter also. ”
“Why, Tia Mariquita,” interrupted Dr. de los Rios, “this seems to me a common Spanish bargueño, and not at all old; you know, that good varnished Spanish pine. ”
Tia Mariquita turned on him indignantly:
“That is nothing but envy, you are always trying to ridicule the most sacred things.”
“Don’t get mad, Tia Mariquita, you know I always like to tease you.”
She turned to me — a decided concession:
“Do not believe him. He is always joking. It is really a very old Oriental work of art.”
Although I did not see anything Oriental about it, I nodded respectfully.
In the street Dr. de los Rios asked me:
“Do you know why she insisted that we should not mention that only-child-grave business to Olózaga?”
“Because it grieves him, I suppose.”
“Of course not. It is because he does not know anything about it. It is one of the stories she has worked out all by herself. She is as sterile as a mule and could not have a child if she had lain with a bishop.”
“And what is that about the Chinese ancestor of her husband?”
“I forgot to tell you. Olózaga seems to have Oriental blood in him of some kind. I don’t know whether Chinese or something else. You will see by his features when you meet him. Perhaps that is also imagination. He was a bit given to the romantic, too, and I believe he has encouraged her disrespect for truth.”
I reminded Dr. de los Rios that he was supposed to call on a patient.
“I just said that in order to get away. Didn’t you hear her say that she was going to read a play? I could not stay and listen to that thing again.”
“Have you heard it already?”
“A thousand times.”
“Is it any good?”
“It is ghastly, but she persists in being a playwright.”
The Theater
And then I learned that the play in question was what brought about her marriage with Olózaga.
He was in Madrid at that time backing up cheap shows. He met her somehow. She showed him the play and he produced it. The play was so bad that everybody began to speak about it as the worst play they had seen. Everybody went to the theater to have a good time laughing at the play. They called the authoress to the stage and applauded long and cheered and she came out delighted, taking it all as a real tribute to her genius. Perhaps it was in a way. In that manner the house was full every night and they made money. One day Cendreras the secretary told Olózaga that the public was just ridiculing his wife and having a good time at her expense, but Olózaga told him that his wife was happy and they were making money, so why not overlook that trifle?
After that they went into the theater business and toured Spain in vaudeville. Everything was done in the cheapest and most rampant style. They gathered a bunch of starving actors who would perform for next to nothing and went on that way. There were one or two one-act plays in which Tia Mariquita played. The public continued to mock her and applaud and pay. She had a collection of Spanish shawls and every time the public called her she appeared in a different one and the public made it its business to exhaust the supply of shawls, until she appeared again with the same one and then someone would cry: “We have seen that one already.” Then she felt insulted and called the public cochons, a word she had taken from the French and thought very disdainful. Cendreras told Dr. de los Rios all these things.
One day they were in Bilbao and decided to present her play again. It had been rearranged as a musical comedy with music by a certain Paroddi, an Italian they had accumulated in their theatrical life. It was a sordid performance. The leading lady had been taken sick and Tia Mariquita had to take her place. They could not find an orchestra cheap enough and they hired a piano out of tune. The singers in their turn were out of tune and out of time with the piano. The settings did not go with the play and shook threateningly. At the end of the second act, half of the settings came down and Tia Mariquita had a fit in the middle of the stage. It was a disastrous performance. The public they met there were not so patient and began to hiss and pound their feet on the floor. Tia Mariquita, who had recovered, became furious at this behavior and showed the audience her middle finger, a vulgar action she had learned from her theatrical crowd and the offensive meaning of which she did not know apparently. This enraged the public, someone threw something at the stage and then the storm broke. The people began to yell and call her all kinds of names. They went out into the street demanding their money back and called out for the drawers of Olózaga. I could never get the meaning of this last demand.
At the stage door they met Olózaga. He discharged a terrible blow at the first one who approached him. At that time he must have been over sixty years old. The mob rushed at him and he smashed right and left and with the poor aid of Cendreras succeeded in holding the mob back until the police came. Poor Cendreras was badly hurt in the fight, but Olózaga did not have a single scratch and was only exhausted. More than sixty years is not the age to face a furious mob.
“And what did they do after that?”
“Well, they quit the theater and settled in Madrid. Since then he has attempted several other business ventures but with little success. He is quite old now, you know, and is beginning to slow down. It is the action of time. No matter how much vitality a man may have, time will get him sooner or later. Everything decays.”