“I find your line of reasoning quite remarkable. I’m sure I don’t know what scandals you are referring to, but, well, I can only imagine. But truly, my friend, I am at a loss as to what this has to do with the fifty thousand pessetes your brother owes me.”
“Just be patient, Senyor Baró, and answer me this question. If you’re willing to answer it, that is …”
“Well, it depends what we’re talking about.”
“It is very simple: what would happen to you, if you were to find yourself tied up in a scandal, in one of those shameful scandals, do you get my drift? Indeed, what if you were the protagonist?”
“Listen to me, young Lloberola. This question of yours is utterly preposterous. Whom do you think you are speaking with? Your question has no more effect on me than if you asked what would happen if I had four noses instead of one!”
“I do not find the comparison to be sound. I find it a bit exaggerated. Indeed, Senyor Baró, I think you are a formidable optimist! All right, then, if you do not wish to answer my question, don’t answer it. I will ask you another, much more direct, question: What were you doing yesterday at six in the afternoon in the house of Dorotea Palau, the dressmaker?”
From the start of the second half of this dialogue, Antoni Mates had been anticipating a catastrophe. His initial flash of panic had been replicated with two or three of Guillem’s words. As the young man continued to talk, the Baró de Falset felt like one of those philanthropic souls who lie down on an operating table to offer their blood for a transfusion. Little by little, the baron was growing weaker. By the time the direct question arrived, the loss of moral calories had reached the magnitude of a collapse.
The baron was materially frozen. At the base of each hair on his head he felt a cruel sting, as if one of those parasites that inhabit the scalps of filthy ragamuffins had taken up strategic residence at the roots of his own hair. And at one precise moment each and every one of those parasites, obeying an imaginary bugle call, had sunk its monstrous pincers into the skin of el Senyor Baró.
Three seconds were all it took for the blood to return to his brain and for him to come up with a response. A response he offered up without much faith and with very little hope of success.
“Listen, young man, I don’t feel obligated to answer your question, but I need not hide anything I do. At six o’clock yesterday afternoon, at the home of the dressmaker you mentioned, I was accompanying my wife as she was fitted for a few outfits. Naturally, it may seem ridiculous to you that I should accompany my wife to the dressmaker’s, because young people, I mean young people nowadays, often do not understand the attentions that persons like myself consider worthy of dispensing. But as I see it …”
Clearly this grotesque comment on the part of Antoni Mates, this groveling to justify something as simple as accompanying his wife, was simply pathological. In point of fact, the baron barely knew what he was saying, he tripped over his tongue, he muddled about stupidly, because, though he was no genius, neither was he an idiot. Guillem spent a moment of cruel voluptuosity listening to these “theories” on attentiveness, understanding, or lack of understanding, but, since Guillem was also standing on shifting sands and felt a little frantic himself, he cut the baron’s comments short with these words:
“Senyor Baró, please. Enough theatrics. I asked you what you were doing at six o’clock in the afternoon. There is no need for you to tell me. I know as well as you, or perhaps even better, what you were doing. It would not be elegant to go into detail. You and I are both perfectly aware.”
Now the baron was like one of those boxers felled in the ring, who hear the count of five, six, seven, eight …, who are aware of everything, who want to make an effort to get up, but whose legs are glued to the mat.
“Are you taken aback, Senyor Baró, at my speaking with such confidence? There are only two people who could know what you were doing yesterday at six o’clock in the afternoon, is that not true? La Senyora Baronessa and an … other, a …, well, it doesn’t matter, call him what you will. And I am very surprised, Senyor Baró, that you have not yet realized that that ‘other’ was I.”
If Antoni Mates had been a normal man, a man physiologically like the majority of men, perhaps he would have reacted like an orangutan, going for the jugular of that cynical creature, attempting to strangle him, trying to do something — something a man would do. Instead, a suppuration of sad misery escaped from his closed lips, and with his eyes on the ground, his cheeks livid, like an absolute idiot, like a martyr disposed to be beaten, the Baró de Falset could not say a word. Perhaps within a few seconds he would have found a way to articulate words, but for the moment it was no use. Guillem, who was perfectly aware of what was going on, and who was enjoying how well the scene was going, took a pistol from his pocket.
“Senyor Baró, I admit that what I am doing here is an unspeakable fraud. And I offer you a solution because it can come to an immediate end, if you so desire. All you have to do is shoot; the pistol is at your disposal. At such a short distance, even if your hand trembles, the shot will almost certainly be on target. But think what you expose yourself to. It would be difficult, you understand, to justify a murder in this salon, at this time of day, in these circumstances. I don’t recommend suicide; it would be grotesque. What’s more, to commit suicide requires a measure of valor. Until now, only I know about ‘this.’ Your wife knows about it, too, and Dorotea Palau knows (but naturally not in full detail). It is in your interest, and in mine as well, but much more in yours, that no one else should be privy to ‘this.’ The procedure is very simple: the promissory note for fifty thousand pessetes, which you extended to my brother, should immediately be transferred into this satchel.”
Antoni Mates had found a way to articulate words. Not a particularly clever way, because in fact he was beaten. Even if the man blackmailing him had possessed all the facts needed to compromise him, if it had been any other than the very person who had “collaborated” in the secret liaison at the dressmaker’s house, he would have felt in possession of at least a scrap of dignity. But the fact that it was that very person produced such an intense shame in him, such an unbearable collapse, that everything Antoni Mates did manage to say must be considered of great merit, because his natural impulse was to abandon himself to guttural moaning, and to wailing like a wild beast. Strange as it may seem, Antoni Mates had never, never, considered this possibility; it had seemed inconceivable to him that such a thing could happen. And this way of seeing it is perfectly normal for a man of Antoni Mates’s stripe. Any person who has a shameful flaw that essentially obligates him to behave differently from others is the victim of a certain innocence, because his desire outweighs everything else, and he cannot measure the consequences. When someone provides him a way to satisfy his abnormality, no matter how few guarantees are offered, he madly pursues its satisfaction, despite the insufficiency of the guarantees. And herein lies the innocence of these deviants. It consists in their believing in the good faith of others, in the good faith, above all, of the accomplice, and in hoping against hope that the thing will remain hidden. And sometimes this takes place in imprudent circumstances, in circumstances in which it is impossible for the secret to be kept. But the poor deviant doesn’t see it. Sad to say, he gives in; he will run any risk, like a child incapable of foreseeing danger. And when he realizes that the secret is no secret, when he realizes there could be a scandal, and in the enormity of the scandal, the poor deviant, if his name is Baró de Falset, becomes demoralized, and loses all control, all his masculine integrity. In the case of Antoni Mates, the type of amusements to which he had surrendered himself aggravated the situation. He had debased himself, he had debased his wife, he had engaged in an indefensible conjugal monstrosity. Antoni Mates was aware of it all; he saw all the consequences of the extortion clearly. A strong person, a real scoundrel, could have confronted the consequences, would have found thousands of ways out. He could have forged ahead and neutralize the perfect swine who had lent himself to such a vile ceremony for three hundred pessetes. But a pirate is needed for such occasions, and Antoni Mates only revealed his ragman’s fangs at the meetings of the board. In a contest such as this the only teeth he showed were weak and womanish.