Hortènsia Portell didn’t sympathize by a long shot with the deluge of tawdry pomp of the times, but she found herself, and most of her friends and relations, caught up in the game. She was in her element, like almost all the fine bourgeois ladies of the period, with a taste for public display and exhibition. Hortènsia was a weak woman, and she couldn’t say no to anyone. At heart she was very tolerant and liberal, but lacking in deep-rooted convictions. It was this temperament — perfumed like her skin with superficiality and distraction — that invented those grand eclectic gatherings at her home.
Because that night on the Passeig de la Reina Elisenda, alongside that whole empty, déclassé world, Hortensia had also invited people who had played a role in the old Catalanist political life. These were men who stood apart from the masquerade, including the occasional sensible businessman, skeptical grayhair, or intelligent young mien.
Hortènsia had brought together exactly the sort of mélange that can always be found at pompous Barcelona gatherings. A mélange of this sort is the result of improvisation, rapid growth, and insufficient review of credentials. It is also the result of a somewhat materialistic world, in which the brand and price of an automobile is paid respect even before the person ensconced within has been identified. The occupant is then extended moral credit and elegance credit in proportion to the price and brand of said automobile. All this dressing up as aristocratic scarecrows that had been the consequence of the First World War was spurred on further by the mentality of the Dictatorship.
If the conversations of all the different groups had been placed side-by-side they might have produced the effect of Horace’s monster, with the peculiarity that each of the monster’s members would have been gnawing at the other.
The most peppery tongues belonged to those fifty years and over; the most airy lungs would glide back and forth from tangos to love and from love to tangos.
Most of the young men’s dialogue centered on chassis, car bodies and gonorrhea. These conversations, in a Catalan spoken to the tune of a zarzuela, sounded like a bumblebee buzzing, smelled like mineral oil, and were tinted the color of permanganate.
Among the more serious political topics were timidly broached, and Romanesque art might be discussed, along with the half dozen most highly valued legs at the party. Great Barcelona events were spoken of with satisfaction, from the construction going forward on the Plaça de Catalunya to the two thousand priests from a whole range of Spanish dioceses who would be coming for the 1929 Exposició Universal. These canons would check out the objects on display in the Palau Nacional, the main exhibition space of the fair, and then stroll down the Rambla in mufti, smoking cigars. In certain male circles, anticlericalism was in vogue.
The ladies in the tapestry room were all aflutter. Many didn’t believe the dictator would come. Hortènsia smoothed their feathers. Shrill as a parrot, the young Marquesa de León squawked in Spanish for everyone to hear: “I saw Miguel this afternoon, and he assured me he was coming.” These particulars offered up by the marquesa caused a few old ladies to snicker, as it was going around that she and Primo de Rivera were in a dalliance.
The arrival of Conxa Pujol, the Baronessa de Falset, caused a commotion, as she was coming without her husband. She was escorted by her in-laws, who looked as if their only reason for coming to the party was to accompany her.
It was the first time that Conxa had attended such an event without her husband. She was at the peak of her great beauty. Conxa must have been thirty or thirty-five years old. All the men’s eyes clung like leeches to her cleavage. Her skin was the most fascinatingly foreign and dreamy product ever to grace the streets of Barcelona.
Conxa’s presence stirred up a great deal of commentary. The topic of Antoni Mates was vividly and impertinently present. Everyone had his own personal version of the famous cotton dealer’s state of mind. Many claimed he had gone mad. In one group, they secretly exchanged shady references, but the explanations were completely off the mark. Without a doubt, the main source of these references was the Baró de Falset’s own behavior, and, at most, some particular detail from the market scare, because, in fact, Guillem de Lloberola had not used any of his arsenal against the baron.
Conxa made her way over to the jaunty team after dropping a few crumbs for the old ladies and allowing herself to be subjected to a string of malicious questions.
Hortènsia escaped from the rheumatic team and went over to breathe in a bit of the fragrance of freshly-mown grass that surrounded Conxa Pujol. The baronessa’s only explanation was that her husband was a bit weary, but she said she would not under any circumstances have missed Hortènsia’s big night.
Among the men who decided to wag their tails in the vicinity of Conxa Pujol’s stockings was a young man with curly hair and the face of a child who said a couple of words amid the hurly-burly of men who were melting over the baronessa’s skin. Clearly that young man was not part of the scene, because many asked who he was.
Bobby was in one of those groups, He cleared it up for them:
“That’s Guillem de Lloberola.”
“De Lloberola?” said his interlocutor. “Ah, sure! The brother of that cad, right? Your former friend?”
“Precisely,” added Bobby. Neither he nor his companion said another word.
But Guillem still triggered the following exchange between two other people in the group:
“Who are these Lloberolas?”
“How can I put it?.… I don’t know …, just some old spongers …”
The Marquesa de Perpinyà de Bricall i de Sant Climent made another sensational entrance. She swept in like a dethroned queen, escorted by her son-in-law, a couple of colonels, and her sister-in-law, who was from Valencia and flaunted the title of Duquesa de Benicarló. The Marquesa de Perpinyà wore a very severe black dress with a golden shawl draped over her shoulders. She was ugly and misshapen and her skin was pitted and deathly white, as if coated with cheap stucco. The marquesa belonged to the most authentic nobility in the country. It was said that she had a decisive influence on all echelons of the regime. She could have Captain Generals removed from office, and in Madrid people paid her much mind. The Dictator stopped by her house for coffee every day. Ever since the coup d’état in 1923, the marquesa had puffed up like a bullfrog. Legend had it that the coup was planned in her palace on Carrer de Carders.
The presence of this grande dame pacified a number of the ladies, because in effect it guaranteed that the dictator would be showing up at one point or another. Otherwise, the Marquesa de Perpinyà would not have bothered to attend Hortènsia Portell’s party. The marquesa paraded stiffly among the files of the dumbfounded, and went over to sit under the tapestry, immersed in the poisonous pomp that was beginning to enter a comatose state. Generals bowed to kiss her hand with a cocky and liturgical flourish, and she alternated laughs and hiccups, producing a dry, infrahuman voice, reminiscent of the sound of walnuts rolling around in a sack. In one corner of the great hall there were two middle-aged men. One had a gray moustache and a disabused and absent air, and the other had a lively demeanor and the mouth of a jackal. When the one with the gray moustache caught sight of the Marquesa de Perpinyà, he said to his companion: