As things became routine, Pat began detaching himself from all the poetry of their contacts and came to see Maria Lluïsa’s body as just one of many. They became so familiar with each other that love slipped away into the physiological routine. Pat wasn’t a boy with the imagination to refresh situations, to enhance new onslaughts with a touch of lyricism. No matter what literature says, the practice of love is monotonous. If there isn’t a faith and a tenderness underlying it, sex becomes mechanical and boredom waters down the veins. To compensate for this, Pat tried to rough up the scenes a bit. Maria Lluïsa followed him effortlessly. Pat was too accustomed to treating only one kind of woman to stray from the acquired procedure, and he applied to Maria Lluïsa’s flesh the practices of the others. His language was pure at first; salty or crass words alluding to the erotic function were far from his thoughts. Later, those words and those thoughts appeared one by one, at first timidly, and later with insolence. Finally they were just normal and had lost all their spice. Maria Lluïsa was becoming intoxicated with a gas characteristic of brothels. Pat obliviously allowed her to become intoxicated. As Maria Lluïsa relinquished her last traces of modesty, Pat felt more composed. Each of them was beyond the danger of falling in love. A few months had gone by and everything was smooth as silk. They met a couple of times each week. Maria Lluïsa averted all the family dangers, and Pat no longer bothered to pretend when people alluded to his collage, smiling with the affable vanity of a self-indulgent child.
At the bank where Maria Lluïsa worked it seems that someone hinted at things about her and someone high up in the establishment took a greater interest in her. Maria Lluïsa’s friend told her not to be a fool, but she hadn’t yet come to this conclusion. Much to the contrary. Ever since Maria Lluïsa and Pat were lovers, she had become much more reserved with other men. She wasn’t doing it to be faithful to him. It was more out of self-preservation, to defend the willful demise of her moral sense behind a mask of correctness.
Ten months had gone by since the scenes at the beach in Llafranc, and the change in Maria Lluïsa’s soul was inconceivable. The truth be told, this was only a rapid and astonishing growth of the seeds Maria Lluïsa unwittingly carried inside. The strangest thing was that, through the whole affair, Maria Lluïsa was destroying any trace of sentimentalism day by day. She even realized that she didn’t feel the slightest bit jealous if she saw that Pat was feeding her a couple of lies to cover up his involvement with other women. Maria Lluïsa had turned her relationship with him into a bit of sport. It was true that she had tired of her virginity, and her sustained commerce with a fresh, muscular, and well-groomed young man gave Maria Lluïsa more aplomb and allowed her to walk in the world with more satisfaction, appetite, and joy. Pat found in her all the advantages of a delicious vamp, without any of the drawbacks or annoyances because, in addition, Maria Lluïsa was docile and undemanding. If on occasion it wasn’t good for Pat to go out with her, Maria Lluïsa didn’t protest in the least and always understood.
The Lloberola tarnish had produced in Maria Lluïsa a variation on her uncle Guillem. Not for nothing did Leocàdia feel the same tenderness and the same fear when she looked at her younger son and her older granddaughter.
When things had been going on like that for a year, when Pat had lost any trace of scruples or fears, the conflict arose. More than two months had gone by since Maria Lluïsa had had what ladies call their period. The young woman was a bit unnerved. The symptoms were quite clear: pain in the kidneys, upset stomach, some swelling in the ankles, and an aversion to cigarettes and to strong smells. Maria Lluïsa kept silent, hoping for a solution, but ended up telling her friend at the bank. The girl gave her a remedy that was nothing but a strong purgative. Maria Lluïsa had a very unpleasant reaction but it didn’t solve anything. Then Maria Lluïsa told Pat. It fell on him like a bombshell. The first few months it had been all he thought about, but after a year it didn’t seem possible any more. He had become accustomed to the thought that this danger didn’t exist. When she saw Pat’s anxiety and desperation, Maria Lluïsa started laughing in his face like a madwoman.
“I always thought you were a chicken.”
“Oh, sure, a chicken. What do you expect me to do?”
“Nothing, Pat. I don’t want you to do anything.”
Pat had in fact started to be fed up with their relations; they no longer held any interest for him. All that was left was servile routine and Pat was distracted by other things. Marrying Maria Lluïsa was the farthest thing from his mind. For the time being Pat didn’t want to marry anyone, much less Maria Lluïsa. His idea of matrimony was ultraconservative. One thing was a lover, but a potential legitimate wife was something entirely different. Maria Lluïsa was, to him, an absurd, insecure, morally-depraved girl. He had contributed to her supposed depravation, but that was of no importance. Pat didn’t even realize it. If his back were up against the wall, he wouldn’t have hesitated to affirm that he was blameless in the case of Maria Lluïsa, and that it was she who had ravished him. Pat didn’t have the guts to tell his father about the problem; he would have been furious. Maria Lluïsa came from a noble family, but they were absolutely ruined. In his house they had no social standing. She was earning her living in a bank as an ordinary typist. Pat thought of his sister Isabel, of the aristocratic pretensions of the Sabadells, of his father’s millions, his factory, his outboard motorboat, his friends in the Club Nàutic and the Club Eqüestre. It was monstrous, it was impossible. On the other hand, the girl had known no other man than he and Pat unquestionably had to confess he was the father of the child she was carrying in her womb. Not that the Sabadell mentality gave no credence to considerations of conscience. Pat was perfectly aware of the question of conscience and of his duty as a gentleman and a man, but, terrified and in a panic, he said nothing. Wide-eyed before Maria Lluïsa’s bitter smile, he was incapable of making a decision. He was afraid to propose an abortion to her. Such a thing would have to be her idea, and an operation could be dangerous. Pat didn’t know anything about such things. His ideas about obstetrics were very vague, but he had heard that such procedures, in addition to being a crime, were dangerous and sometimes fatal. The idea of an infanticide was repugnant to his sentimental, bourgeois mentality, but even more repugnant was the idea of confessing to the whole affair and marrying Maria Lluïsa. Pat was a weak, spoiled child, a creature who could drown in a glass of water.