The marquis, desperate and ashamed, both by the loss of the money and by the swindle they had fallen prey to, was silent as a tomb. Not enough, however, to keep the news from Hortènsia Portell’s ears.
The Marquesa de Lió was the subject of more delightful incidents. At the time of the revolutionary coup, the marquesa was true to her principles. She was prepared for the revolutionaries to come and rape her. She put on provocative pajamas and even left the door to her apartment ajar. She felt like a martyr for the monarchy. She didn’t want to flee, she wanted to give her blood and her honor for the cause of the king. When the marquesa realized no one was coming to rape her, and the Republicans were a peaceful lot, she saw that she was making a fool of herself. She had her suitcases all packed to go to France when she was visited by a great friend, Don Lluís Figueres, one of the most brilliant minds of the Dictatorship. The marquesa thought Don Lluís would flee with her, but Don Lluís was very calm, and found the whole business of the Republic rather amusing. So the marquesa stayed on in Barcelona and within a few days was discussing feminist politics and her belief that women should play a role in the new regime. She even wangled an introduction to a member of the Parliament from the Republican Left party, and ended up thinking Niceto Alcalá Zamora was rather charming.
It was the hippopotamic senyora Valls-Darnius, though, who broke all records. We already met her at Hortènsia’s party, precisely when she had sworn never to say another word in Catalan, as a consequence of her husband’s great windfall thanks to his dirty dealings with the Dictatorship. To assure that the deal her husband had made would continue to render the same benefits under the Republic, she claimed to have felt Republican all her life and dated her Catalanism to before the 1892 Bases de Manresa, the cornerstone of the Catalan regional Constitution.
La Baronessa de Sant Rafael, who was more romantic than her poor husband, fled to eat the bread of exile with the other aristocrats. This is how she put it to her acquaintances. While the poor baron went and trawled for lipfish and sawfish in Palamós, the baronessa ran off to Biarritz with her gigolo to dance the tango. When her money ran out, she went home to shed her last monarchical tears.
As a rule, in fact, the local aristocracy didn’t go very far, and didn’t sell or cash in all that many assets. Most stayed home, biding their time, and many even adopted the Republican label. What they wanted, though, was a moderate, Catholic Republic, and when faced with what they called the demagoguery of the Constituent Courts, the response was a Homeric chorus of caterwauling. From the pulpit, the clergy saw to inflating their howls, preaching the apparition of the Beast of the Apocalypse in the land. Carlists and devotees of the dethroned king united in the common cause of opposing the Republic and celebrating solemn masses. When Don Jaume de Borbó died, they dedicated a magnificent funeral in the Barcelona cathedral to him. That funeral was one of the most brazen demonstrations of monarchist sentiment. In the aftermath, a few worshippers murdered a poor boy who was passing by, so that the solemn funeral would share in the prestige of shedding innocent blood. It appears some religious monarchists favored human sacrifice.
All the public and private events that took place throughout those days were of tremendous interest to Hortensia Portell. She was in her element in the Republic. It wasn’t that she had fallen out with the opposition or the desperate; she felt the tears of those afflicted by the new regime, and occasionally she even humored them, but in both form and substance Hortènsia felt like a Republican. She believed in progress and evolution, and where modernity was concerned, no one was going to get the jump on her. This was why Hortènsia wanted to meet and get to know the Catalan Republican personalities, and that night Josep Safont would be coming to her house. She had also invited Rafaela Coll, Isabel Sabadell, and Bobby Xuclà. Isabel was already friendly with Josep Safont; she claimed to be even more Republican than Hortènsia.
Josep Safont held important posts. He was a volatile young man from a comfortable, bourgeois background, but he had felt like a revolutionary all his life. He had been a syndicalist and a communist, he had been in prison, and he had spent a good bit of time in exile. Once he held a position in the government Josep Safont decided to make overtures to the aristocracy, and he allowed it to be inferred that he had affairs with married ladies from the upper crust. Safont was short and thin and blond, with horn-rimmed glasses and a Levitical voice. He considered himself worldly and irresistible. He would wink an eye, and give only a partial account of his conquests, implying that he was quite the sensation. The ladies would poke fun at him, and, as you might expect, he didn’t catch on. Isabel Sabadell pretended to be soft on Safont, and he declared that when the law permitting divorce was passed, he would probably marry her.
That night Safont was at the height of his brilliance. The ladies listened to him with delight. Hortènsia was the most sentimental of the group, and her eyes rolled back in her head when Safont disclosed the torments the police had subjected him to. He also told tales of struggles and death threats in the days of the pistol-packing union busters. Safont had never been tortured, and even in the midst of the turmoil he had always more or less had a good time. In Paris, his father sent him tons of money and Safont devoted more time to intense love affairs than to conspiring. Safont had the overheated imagination common to the southern climes, and in the presence of ladies he turned into a peacock.
Rafaela found him undistinguished. Rafaela thought all the men of the Republic were common and ill-mannered, and felt that no good could come of their ilk. She was among those who claimed that the city councilors and the officials of the Catalan government were a pack of thieves who had turned the Plaça de Sant Jaume, where both City Hall and the Generalitat were located, into Sodom and Gomorrah. In Hortènsia’s house, Rafaela contained herself, and in truth she enjoyed hearing Safont go on, because she was curious and loved intrigue. She liked to have a finger in every pie.
Bobby was apathetic, pessimistic and polite. He believed in nothing. Not in the men of the Republic, nor in the ones who came before. He was an absolute skeptic. Politics disgusted him. In Bobby’s eyes, Safont was as much of an arriviste as all the others, and he felt tremendous scorn for Hortènsia and Isabel, drooling over that short, blond man.
Along with the potins about the members of the fallen regime, there was beginning to be new and entertaining gossip about the personalities of the new regime. The brilliant folk of Barcelona have always been rather provincial in spirit, and the most stimulating gossip was always the chatter about things happening in Madrid. Rafaela would quote the words of Minister Indalecio Prieto to show what a boor he was; Isabel and Hortènsia found them very funny. Safont brought fresh stories that met with great approval. Of the morsels that circulated about Barcelona, the most sought-after were the ones about Senyora Casulleres. She was the wife of an important public figure, a beautiful, sassy, and vain brunette who had always lived in the deepest poverty, and was out of her depth with her husband’s new position. Only a few months before, no one had ever heard of this woman, and yet in just days she had become the rage in Barcelona. Monstrous tales circulated about Senyora Casulleres among the ladies of the aristocratic circles that hated the Republic. Some of the things they said about her were true, and some were lies. There was also a lot of talk about Senyora Sabater, a poor, tacky, and grotesque woman who had pretensions to being Madame de Tallien. Senyora Sabater gave tea parties at which she recited poetry before a series of reptilian followers of communism. The prevailing topic among the aristocratic ladies was the debauchery and dirty business of the Republic. In this area, fantasy and calumny achieved the sublime. It was said that the wife of another public figure had purchased and paid cash for jewelry valued at one hundred thousand duros. There wasn’t a single dressing room, confession box, meublé, or nuptial bedroom that hadn’t heard the story of these jewels a thousand times over.