To affirm that a lady was sublime neither her witticisms, nor her acts of philanthropy, nor the anatomical perfection of her hips were mentioned. The only thing worthy of comment was the color or make of the dress she wore to this party or that concert. In general, people limited their vocabulary to the words “nice” or “not nice.” The words “just,” “honest,” “brave,” “contemptible,” or “ignorant,” were not in good form over the green of a golf course or a bridge table. It was very easy to be nice, because Maria Lluïsa’s era was also one of the less demanding, and the dimension of the glands secreting niceness were four times the size of the liver.
After her year of sexual apprenticeship, Maria Lluïsa was perfectly equipped to calculate the value of all her physical attributes without falling into the traps set for shy, inexpert or innocent girls. Fortunately, Pat was so inferior to her that he had not left any trace of himself or any kind of depravity in the blue and pink regions of her soul. When the moment of disenchantment arrived, in the face of Pat’s selfishness and cowardice, the bit of affection Maria Lluïsa had felt for him allowed her to react without violence. So it was that her blood absorbed a few injections of bitter skepticism and she developed — and in this she was quite mistaken — an absolutely pejorative notion of men’s emotions. Maria Lluïsa believed that all the boys of her day with a bit of decorative value, like Pat, would behave the same way, and that a girl like her could not harbor any illusions of finding anything better. Maria Lluïsa did not suffer the nerves of many women her age, who dream of a great love and, unsatisfied and disillusioned, don’t realize they have failed until they find their hearts dried up in their fingers like a useless object. Maria Lluïsa was lucky enough to sense the presence of delightful topics in the world that were not precisely the death of Isolde or the imitation of that death as it is carried out between an infinity of sheets in public houses and private homes. Even at the start of her relations with Pat, Maria Lluïsa had realized she was not at all temperamental. Maria Lluïsa’s sensibility resided as much or more in her eyes, her skin, and her palate, and, above all, in her imagination, as it did in the secret corners nature has destined for the most celestial and nebulous of joys. Maria Lluïsa felt that a very furry, flexible, and Machiavellian fox coat or a flawless diamond were much more intense things than the fifth Canto of the Divine Comedy. And this theory of Maria Lluïsa’s should not be seen with overly scrupulous eyes; it was a perfectly human theory, shared by numerous illustrious personalities of the time.
One of Maria Lluïsa’s characteristics was her lack of dignity. This became more pronounced after the intervention at Rosa Trènor’s house. Maria Lluïsa’s era emphasized pure economics, a consequence of which was a relaxation of the sentiment of personal dignity. In Maria Lluïsa, though, this relaxation was aggravated by family circumstances. It’s curious to see how a working-class family or a craftsman or mechanic’s family, or even someone from the middle class working to make a place for himself, feels a sort of gratification, and pride, and most definitely a sense of dignity that families from the grand tradition, accustomed to not working, and for whom the easy life has taken the place of initiative, do not feel, just as economic catastrophe is launching a stage of moral decay. In such families the lack of dignity can sometimes reach unimaginable extremes.
We have already indicated some similarities between Maria Lluïsa and her uncle, Guillem de Lloberola. In fairness to Maria Lluïsa, it must be noted that her family couldn’t offer her any shining examples. The spectacle of her father and mother only served to unleash shamelessness and disaffection. When Maria Lluïsa was able to get a bit free of them, the bank where she worked, the staff she worked for, and her friends were all people who used toothbrushes and worked to fill their stomachs. Pat had pretty clear ideas about sports, but his concept of human dignity was mean and anemic, suffocated by mufflers, sports shirts, and insurance policies.
Maria Lluïsa had experienced these climes, excellent breeding grounds for the fatty existence of the microbe they carry in their blood, a microbe that was nothing more than atavistic fatalism and the natural consequence of the decomposition of the Lloberola family.
Maria Lluïsa’s flaws, in the days when she was nearing her twentieth birthday, were hidden under her ever-so-tender skin, her luminous and artless smile, her natural, soaring way of doing things, and her quality of pure blood and distinction that adhered even to the drabbest and most conventional sweater restraining the rigid joy of her breasts.
It was both the flaws and gifts of that young woman that brought into her life people the reader is already acquainted with. The pages to come will explain how, in human existence, whether by chance, by fate, or by predestination, names that had been separated come to be joined again. An invisible thread of some kind ties their souls together against their wills, and in the end men and women realize that they have staked all their blood on a useless farce of a game. The only thing left of it is a bit of a bad taste in the mouth and a few steps forward on the road to death.
The name of the friend who had had the two abortions was Teresa Martínez. She was older than Maria Lluïsa, and had been frequenting Rosa Trènor’s apartment for a good while. Since we abandoned Rosa Trènor at the entrance to the Grill Room, after she slashed Frederic’s face and wrapped herself in the balding skin of her beaver coat, her life had taken quite a few turns. She had cloaked her life of revelry and sentimentality in tones of respectability. When she realized that the exploitation of her body was a losing business, Rosa Trènor opted to exploit others’ bodies.
Rosa Trènor established her business with the utmost discretion. Secrecy and mystery were her accomplices. The friends of her youth and the pleasant clients of her autumn years visited Rosa Trènor’s house on the pretext of having a glass of champagne or a cup of tea. Everything else was up to Rosa Trènor, and her friends were utterly satisfied. The staff she chose for the business were girls from needy homes and even some from good families. From typists to members of the tennis club: a bit of everything. A very small and perfectly reliable staff.
At the time of the Exposició Universal, Rosa established a great friendship with an extremely important person, a general. Rosa’s every wish was his desire. At that point she expanded other facets of her little business. She bought a few thousand meters of pornographic film and she installed a baccarat table. Rosa Trènor’s apartment was on the second floor of the building, the traditional noble floor, where one would least expect such a place. A plaque on the door that read “La Aseguradora Agrícola, S. A.,” lent the landing an aura of actuarial and agricultural normalcy. The neighborhood watchman knew the score and his palm was well-greased. The attendees at Rosa Trènor’s place were the crème de la crème of Barcelona.
In that new phase of her life, Rosa Trènor was able to put her entire pretentious grande dame repertoire to use. The way she received her clients was worthy of admiration, and the blasé aristocratic smirk that settled onto her plump velvety cheeks so as to play down the importance of things, particularly when the time came to set a price, was also worthy of admiration. To enter Rosa Trènor’s apartment, one had to meet a goodly number of requirements. But for a gentleman known to some degree for his honorability and for the solidity of his bank account, it was sufficient just to present his card. The pornographic films were one of Rosa’s great ruses for reaching other things from which she could derive fatter earnings, particularly the gaming table. The Dictatorship had prohibited gambling throughout Spain, and the fact was that wagering aficionados would have done just about anything to be able to place a decent bet. Rosa Trènor’s baccarat cured no few neurasthenias among the gentry of the time. She had clients who went exclusively for the pornographic films; they tended to be all false teeth and hair more white than black. Rosa Trènor tolerated the parasites of the industry because among them were some who were considered to be the most gelatinous and influential. When the obscene film sessions in Rosa Trènor’s apartment were over, occasionally a retired general or an ancient marquis and president of a religious association would have to grab onto the banister so they wouldn’t fall down the stairs. The doctors registered many burst arteries among the most illustrious elders as a consequence of those films.