The sight of the Gypsy with the bandaged leg haunted Bobby for days. When he and his traveling companions entered Villa Rosa he could still see that old crone bitten by a rabid cat by the side of the counter.
Seated at a table with a bottle of solera sherry before them, Emili Borràs was still talking about Jesus Christ.
Hortènsia, who had traded in her good bourgeois egotism for a Russian soul, found the spectacle of the previous establishment artificial and perfectly commendable. She said everything they had just seen was the “pus from society’s wounds.” The Count, a fan of popular science, said that pus was necessary for the organism to defend itself. He mentioned leucocytes and dead bacteria. Isabel begged them to drop the topic of pus and stop talking about such disgusting things.
Teodora began casting insistent glances at an aeronautics officer who was a friend of hers. The officer was sucking on the nape of a twenty year-old hostess’s neck. She was a bit drunk and very beautiful. When the officer realized that Teodora was watching him, he saluted her smartly, blushed and stopped.
When the Gypsies of the house caught sight of their posh guests, they went over to pay their compliments. Two of them, known as La Tanguera and La Mogigonga for their expertise in dancing and burlesque, finished off the wine the guests hadn’t seen fit to drink. La Tanguera dedicated one of her sublime dances to them, duplicating the delicate and fragile tapping of a wounded partridge.
Emili Borràs made a few Germanic and Freudian comments about flamenco dancing. Hortènsia listened with delight. The Comte rattled on for a while like famed racconteur Garcia Sanchiz but the ladies didn’t take him seriously. Bobby rubbed at his moustache, thinking that he and the ladies and the others and the entire crowd were all a bunch of fools.
They left Villa Rosa at four-thirty in the morning. When they got to the Rambla and jumped into their automobiles it was as if they were waking from a bad dream to find themselves between peaceful sheets, with a drawn bath. They sank into the upholstery, corroborating that indeed it was truly theirs and that nothing horrible had happened to them. Rafaela ran her fingers over her ears, her neck and her wrists to be sure no one had robbed her.
Hortènsia thought vaguely of Raskolnikov, of inverts, of Primo de Rivera, of the Russian soul, of the act at La Sevillana, of Antoni Mates’s wife … But she was very tired and she rested her head on Isabel’s coat. Isabel still had the energy to refresh her lipstick and powder her rouged cheeks.
Just about the same time that Hortènsia Portell reached her house on Passeig de la Reina Elisenda, got undressed, wrapped herself in a Japanese robe, and dissolved two aspirins in a glass of water, in the Grill Room on Carrer d’Escudellers two pairs of police patrolmen were breaking up a group of onlookers who were standing at the door. Inside the establishment things were in disarray. The people sitting at the bar got down from their barstools and stuck their heads into the dining room of the restaurant. There you could see an upended table, and on the floor a sizable circle of wine, a broken bottle, half a filet mignon, a dozen potatoes, and a whole bowl of cheese soup which, sans plate and spread out on the carpet, looked pretty repulsive
In a corner, the restaurant staff and two women who had just arrived were holding up a young woman in the midst of an attack of hysteria, while an utterly ineffectual gentleman, his face blanched with dismay, was dabbing a towel soaked in cold water on his forehead to wipe the blood from a wound caused by a wine bottle. Another group of women was trying to calm a lady wearing a bedraggled beaver coat, her face full of scratches, and the polite gray man who accompanied her. Such a scene in the Grill Room of the time was not unusual, and no one paid it much mind. In the match that had just taken place, no bones had been broken, and the police saw no need to arrest anyone or to trouble any of the actors in the drama. All the owners wanted was to put the whole thing behind them, because there were not yet many people in the restaurant, but soon the regular clientele would begin to arrive.
The lady with the beaver coat and the scratches on her face was Rosa Trènor. Quick to recover, she disappeared in the company of the gray man and a young woman. She had gone there to make a scene, and her work at the Grill Room was done for the evening. The man with the cut on his forehead, Frederic de Lloberola, had them apply a taffeta strip to the wound, which was insignificant. The girl with him was over her attack of hysteria. The waiters cleaned the carpet, set the table with fresh tablecloths, and brought over another bottle of wine, another filet mignon, and another cheese soup.
Rosa Trènor wanted to break up with Frederic, but in her own particular way, which in fact would be like not breaking up. Frederic had had no intention of splitting with her because, oblivious as he was, and seeing other women behind her back as he did, he still found some kind of company and solace in being able to express all the vacuous thoughts that passed through his head to Rosa Trènor in conversations and over dinner. From time to time, a night with her was not all that bad. Frederic thought Rosa was perfectly satisfied with this arrangement, and that the money she had recently asked him for and that he had not been able to give her was of no consequence. Frederic thought her asking for cash was just a casual thing. He thought perhaps she didn’t even need it, and even if she did, she could get along without it. He was convinced that Rosa was an altruist who put no price on her gratitude to Frederic for having renewed their friendship and chosen her as a confidante for such an important life as his.
For all these reasons, Frederic had begun to treat Rosa in a rather despotic way. Ever since the garbage collector had carted off the general’s dog, Frederic had stopped being generous. That gesture of sacrifice was enough to give Frederic a perfect notion of his control over Rosa and of her unconditional devotion to him. Once in possession of this idea he allowed himself to relax his solicitude and treacly gallantry.
Naturally, Rosa saw things very differently from how Frederic imagined them. Rosa thought he pined for her and she had him in her grasp. She thought he was being unfaithful out of spite and revenge. It was his proper desperation — because Rosa considered Frederic a gentleman and she believed in “proper” desperation — in the face of her refusal to bestow certain favors that Frederic demanded and she did not allow. These favors existed only in Rosa’s imagination. A month after they renewed their relations, Rosa and he pretended they could maintain an open-minded status quo. But since they were both romantics, Rosa forswore absolutely her early morning bouquets of camellias (so Frederic thought, at least). Before the sacrifice of the dog, they enjoyed two weeks of outright love. This put wind under Rosa’s wings, but Frederic’s refusal to give her money and his latest infidelities (that she, as we have said, considered unimportant and attributed to spite) obliged her to take some violent action, pull off some outrageous stunt. Frederic had not been to her house in a week, and Rosa was beginning to wonder. For the time being, Frederic was of very little use to her, but he could always turn out to be an ace in the hole, and even his economic situation could be susceptible to change. Don Tomàs was a very old man. He could be carried off to heaven in a blink of the eye, and a bit of change would have to fall Frederic’s way.