“Remember what we were saying about Barcelonism? Now, just take this woman. I know a little about her family history. Her father has gone over it with me many times. The marquesa’s grandfather gave his all for the dynastic Carlists, in opposition to Queen Isabella II. He was in exile in France for ten years; he pawned everything but his shirt. The liberal government confiscated his properties, and he took it like a man …”
“A pointless, foolish enterprise … if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“Pointless and foolish as you like, but in those days people had a little more spine, they knew how to sacrifice, they took life more …”
“Yes, and I have it on good authority that she knows how to sacrifice, too. They say she sold a forest to pay for the party she threw last year for the king and queen …”
“Sure, that’s exactly what she knows how to do, sell forests. You’ll see how things go when she doesn’t have any forests left to sell. And it’s not all her fault, she’s under the pressure of her son-in-law. What can you expect of a duke who’s an ex-croupier and polo champion? He feeds his vanity with his mother-in-law’s money.”
“You can’t deny that she’s a lady who know how to be a lady. She has a certain majesty …”
“The majesty of the domicile.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Oh, sure you do. I mean, people like La Perpinyà and other families cut from the old cloth, if you take them out of the house they live in, they are nothing. They never move from their decaying old manors on the most anti-hygienic streets of Barcelona. The manors hold their gardens, their salons and their chapels. Do you know what it is to live in an immense apartment half taken up by rooms full of junk in which, to add insult to injury, there is a chapel and a chaplain who says Mass? All their tradition can be summed up in the leaks in the ceilings and the mildew on the walls. And beyond those walls, you see, extends the life they have never understood: Barcelona. What have all these people done for the country, what have they contributed? Absolutely nothing. As long as they have forests to cut down, a domestic priest at home to say Mass, and a couple of servants to dust the chairs, they keep going. When all this is gone, they’re nobody. The marquesa has the same mentality as her house on Carrer de Carders. A sad and useless mentality. Her father was Catalan. He was a man who still spoke Catalan. What is she? How does this woman feel about her country and its oh-so-noble traditions? Well, this is how she feels: she marries her only daughter off to a ruined duke from Cartagena who seems to be nothing but a perfect swine, and she runs around like a madwoman behind the imbecile who is mucking things up for all of us …”
“Be careful, man, lower your voice.”
“You tell me if I’m right or not, about this majesty of the domicile. Take the Lloberolas, for example. As long as the Marquès de Sitjar lived on Carrer de Sant Pere més Baix he seemed to be someone. Now he is penniless in an apartment that could just as easily belong to a shopkeeper, and he’s poor Senyor Tomàs, and nothing more. They are people who are incapable of reacting, of living life as it comes. And the marquès’s sons are worse than the sons of my shoemaker. Look at the younger one, over there, yes, the one who’s chatting with the wife of old Mates. He’s nothing but a rascal who will end up in jail.”
“You’re just saying that because you think the Catalan aristocracy has fallen short. But do you really think this pack of pork vendors with titles are any better?”
“Well, I’m not sure if they’re better or worse. Morally, they may be worse, and that’s saying a lot. But they combine their arriviste vanity with an interest in work, an interest, if you will, even in stealing and dirty business. That’s at least something …”
“Well, thanks a lot!”
“Look, what I mean is that among these people, no matter how low-class they are, there are at least some who have initiative, ambition. They get factories rolling, they get banks rolling. They put the stomach of the country to work … Some of these ladies, the ones wearing the most diamonds and speaking the worst Castillian, because they grew up speaking Catalan and working, and never went to school, have husbands who still work twelve hours a day …”
“I find this line of reasoning unpersuasive. You’re just a materialist …”
“And what of it!”
“In any case, all this hoi polloi with their new money earned who knows how, are also running after the dictator and the current regime just as fast as the old aristocrats you criticize.”
“They’re running even faster! They’re chasing him because they can profit from it. And the women do it out of vanity. Since they’re people without convictions, they don’t waste any time. Now they’re supporting this silly general, and tomorrow they’ll throw their weight behind a republic or the communists, if it means a few quartos. Do you see all these gentlemen who are bowing and scraping and collaborating on everything that does the country the greatest harm? Many of them used to vote for la Lliga de Catalunya back when we could vote, and they dressed their daughters in the little white hoods of the Pomells de Joventut — the Catholic, Catalan bouquets of youth! — until the dictator dissolved the association.”
“Well, you’re right there. You Catalanists are certainly not making a very good show for yourselves …!”
“Real Catalanists are few and far between. Back in the glory days of Catalan politics, Prat de la Riba used to say there were no more than a hundred at most. And that’s being generous.”
“Prat de la Riba died in 1917. Hasn’t there been any progress since then?”
“More than likely the number has gone down … Do you see that fellow devouring Aurora Batllori’s cleavage? That fellow was as staunch and fierce a Catalanist as they come. Now he’s accepted a very important commission the Marquès de Foronda procured for him, and some say he is a police informer …”
“Really?”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised. In any case, I’m going over there under the trees, because the ‘beast’ must be about to arrive …”
“Yes, and you continue to talk at the top of your lungs! I don’t know why you even come to these places. A separatist like you! And tomorrow in the social pages of the paper your name will appear right beside the names of these people you find so disgusting …”
“You’re probably right to criticize me. But what’s a man to do? I came out of friendship with Hortènsia. Because I certainly don’t have a good time at these affairs … In the end, though, each of us has his share of cowardice …”
Guillem de Lloberola had met Conxa Pujol just a few days before. They were introduced in a group standing at the Ritz. The baronessa didn’t sense anything special about the boy; she didn’t even notice him, just as she didn’t notice him at Hortènsia’s party. Many young men like Guillem had been introduced to Conxa, and they immediately faded from her memory. What happened to the Baró de Falset when he met Guillem didn’t happen to Conxa: she didn’t recall a voice, she didn’t feel any panic, partly because the two shameful episodes in which Guillem had played a role were enveloped in an olio of darkness and mystery. And partly because after the chantage, those two shameful episodes represented the most chilling phantasm of Antoni Mates’s life. For his wife they only represented two more shameful episodes among a multitude of shameful episodes.