Prevod

“Today is a special day, and tonight is no night to dine alone,” said Rosálbez the banker to his friend the young Count of Planelles, whom he happened to meet in his own street, almost opposite his sumptuous mansion. “You are a bachelor; perhaps you have no dinner engagement… If you would do us the kindness of accepting… at eight o’clock sharp… I shall scarcely eat a thing myself; my stomach is a little out of sorts. You can eat my share…”

“A thousand thanks, and I accept,” the count replied warmly. “I was going to dine with a few fellows at the Nuevo Club. I’ll send them word, and that settles it… Though there is hardly any need to let them know: when they don’t see me there…”

“Excellent! Until this evening,” murmured Rosálbez, springing into the little brougham waiting to take him, as it did every day, to a small square, from which he would walk to a certain house whose door it was best his carriage should not approach. It was an open secret, as our French neighbours say; no one in Madrid was unaware that Rosálbez kept that bold-eyed beauty, Lucía la Cordobesa, with all her wit and allure, and that the diversion cost him dearly—but those who have it spend it.

It should be known that the wealthy Rosálbez had reached the age of fifty-six, and his temper and tastes were beginning to change noticeably. In earlier days he had needed no note of affection in his relations with women: all he asked was that they amuse him for a moment. Now, no doubt, the physical wear of age was softening his heart, and what he sought was quiet pleasure, the gentle flattery of a daughter’s fond attentions. His real daughter, Fanny, showed him an icy respect, a passive, mechanical obedience, and Rosálbez hoped to find in the Cordobesa spontaneity, loving warmth, something different, something that would stir the ashes and coax up gentle flames. With this hope and this desire, he knocked at her door on Christmas Day.

Lucía was at her dressing table. She wore a pink flannel dressing gown. The maid, who was gathering up her magnificent mass of wavy, jet-black hair with a broad comb, discreetly withdrew when she saw her mistress’s protector enter.

The Cordobesa smiled; Rosálbez took one of her hands and, repeatedly stroking its satin-brown skin and shapely fingers, addressed her thus:

“So we are dining together tonight, little one? And you yourself will go into the kitchen and see to the almond soup and the little compote with cinnamon sticks, in the fashion of your part of the country?”

Lucía lowered her heavy, silky eyelids for a moment, and her pale mouth, in which her teeth gleamed like pieces of cold white glass, set into a peevish grimace.

“Oh, my dear! What fancies you do take, by Saint Raphael! Must I sing it to you or say it in my prayers? You know my cousin from Écija is in Madrid, and she wants me to go with her to Midnight Mass. If you’re content to dine at eight and clear out at eleven sharp… well and good; after that… I have an engagement.”

Rosálbez bristled; his bald head flushed crimson. “An engagement! Well, I like that! And what engagement could matter more to you than I do? Dinner is at eight in my house; on a night like this I cannot leave my daughter alone, especially when we have guests.”

“Oh! Guests! Who?” “People you don’t know. The Ruidencinas, Mario Lirio, the Count of Planelles…” Lucía burst out laughing. Her laughter was vulgar (nothing betrays a person’s origins, upbringing and quality of soul like the sound of a laugh).

“What are you laughing at?” exclaimed the banker impatiently. “At you,” she replied shamelessly. “Fancy insisting I don’t know them! I know everybody.”

That insolent, mocking laughter, which still went on, hurt Rosálbez. He would have paid dearly for a gleam of melancholy in the Cordobesa’s great Arab eyes, for a look of gentleness on her dusky face.

“Will you give me dinner or not?” he insisted curtly, feeling a tingling in his hands, an urge to handle the laughing woman roughly. “At twelve… don’t even dream of it, my dear,” she declared, with the same disdainful firmness.

“Very well, my girl,” Rosálbez said tersely, rising and making for the door. Halfway down the passage he heard Lucía’s footsteps behind him and her voice calling him back in jest; but instead of turning round, he quickened his pace, sharply pulled back the latch and hurried down the stairs. Once in the little square, he remembered that he had dismissed his carriage, and set off on foot to calm his nervous agitation. A sudden light flooded his mind; he understood what was happening. The plain truth was that he had fallen in love with Lucía, with the untamed, gypsy-like Cordobesa. Until then he had regarded her as a piece of furniture or an object of luxury: with utter indifference. But the crisis of his middle years, softening his heart, was causing an unfamiliar feeling to take root in him. As that immortal night consecrated to pure love drew near, when one longs to rest one’s head upon the breast of a beloved being, Rosálbez had dreamed that breast would be the Cordobesa’s, and the depth of his sorrow at his disappointment gave him the exact measure of his hopes.

“After all I have done for her!” the banker thought. “I rescued her from degradation and poverty; she owes me even the air she breathes. I have treated her better than anyone; surrounded her with comfort and luxury; I have even shown her consideration… I love her, I worship her… Ungrateful creature!”

The thought of Lucía’s ingratitude brought a kind of tenderness over Rosálbez: he felt sorry for himself, thought himself deeply unfortunate. At this stage of his life, with old age looming, his coffers full and his soul utterly barren and dark, what Rosálbez missed, what he needed to fill that black hole, was affection. His wife had been a hard Basque woman, a stern housekeeper, a dry, spare manager whose only thought was to support her husband’s brilliant speculations by practising strict economy at home. When she died, Rosálbez noticed her absence because the cooks robbed him and his daily expenses rose considerably. And Fanny, his only daughter, somewhat devout, serious and quiet by nature, had no endearments for her father either. One might even have said she looked upon him as a master who gave orders, a superior with whom there was no bond of affection. At present she was wholly absorbed in her romance with the Count of Planelles, not yet made official, as Rosálbez knew; and in the sudden fit of kindness that had seized him, in his desire to see a face smiling at him, he hurried, on returning home, into Fanny’s little sitting room to tell her that Planelles had been invited to dinner. It was tantamount to saying: “I approve of your courtship; now you officially have a suitor.”

On hearing the news, Fanny turned cherry-red and trembled, but replied only: “Very well…” Rosálbez had imagined something else: that she would throw her arms round his neck, embrace him tightly. He had just glimpsed a solution for his life: to draw close to his daughter, to make a home for himself within his own house, to adore and spoil whatever grandchildren God might send. Already he saw a long succession of Christmases to come, joyful family dinners, a tree laden with toys, little playful, slobbery surprises from Grandfather. He thought he could feel the weight of “the eldest” on his knees and the warm hands of “the little girl” tugging at his whiskers. Ah, yes; that was what was good, honourable, worthy, what ought to be done! And, moved, he went up to Fanny and kissed her marble brow, eagerly drinking in the virginal purity of her fresh skin.

Dinner, served at eight o’clock sharp, was splendid. It bore no resemblance to the one Rosálbez had hoped to arrange at the Cordobesa’s: there was no almond soup, no sea bream with slices of lemon, no little compote with cinnamon sticks. Such classic, homely dishes are beneath the dignity of cooks earning thousands of pesetas a year. Such dishes are middle-class. Instead, the most succulent fish and shellfish passed across the banker’s table, prepared in true French style and washed down with rare and precious old wines. The cook’s triumph was a mock sweet ham made of pressed fish (the rule of abstinence on the eve of a holy day could not be broken), which deceived not only the eye but the palate. Fanny, seated to the right of the man she already considered her fiancé, spoke softly to him in the shadow of the centrepiece, composed of white lilacs forced in a hothouse and sprigs of lily of the valley alternating with red camellias. Rosálbez, watching them furtively, could not help exclaiming:

“But Planelles, how little you are eating!” To which the count replied: “My stomach is a little out of sorts…” That simple phrase made the banker shudder. It was exactly what he himself had said that morning when inviting Planelles, while planning to save himself for the other, intimate dinner at Lucía’s at midnight. That strange coincidence, though he had not yet deciphered it, struck his mind like a spark of light. Who can discover along what immaterial threads travels the faint suspicion that precedes the full revelation of the truth? It was not the Cordobesa’s passionate protector, but Fanny’s father, who reflected, fixing his eyes on those of his future son-in-law:

“You won’t fool me with that. You’re fasting to save your appetite. Ah! I shall keep an eye on you. Is it gold you seek in my daughter, or love? Beware of me!” His impression grew stronger when, although Fanny announced that at midnight precisely, as twelve struck, she would serve the guests a glass of Champagne to celebrate the Nativity, the count declared that he was leaving.

A quarter of an hour after the count, the banker descended the white marble staircase and jumped into the first hired carriage standing at the corner. The rickety cab stopped at the Cordobesa’s door. The night watchman did not come to open it: Rosálbez tipped him very generously to let him use his own key, without any tiresome attentions. He crossed the dark entrance hall and, turning left and striking a match, found the lock in the door of the ground-floor apartment.

He was deeply agitated as he inserted the other end of his key into it. He still doubted! Who could tell? Perhaps, as a good Andalusian, faithful to tradition and religion, the Cordobesa had been unwilling to let the night of December 24 pass without attending Midnight Mass, the most joyful and tender of all masses. What happiness to wait for her in the little room lined with blue plush and, when she returned at one, lay in her lap the case containing the pear-shaped pearls, her latest whim! The key turned with a muffled sound; the banker felt the entrance-hall carpet beneath his feet. He lit the tulip-shaped lamp and at the same moment heard merriment and laughter coming from the dining room. On tiptoe he slipped into the wardrobe room to the right of the passage; he wanted to know where he stood: he would see, would know, would make certain of the infamy. The wardrobe room led into a sitting room, and from there, through a glass door, it was easy to make out everything happening in the dining room. Rosálbez stooped and parted the curtains… Opposite him sat the Cordobesa, wearing a Manila shawl and flowers in her hair; beside her, Planelles was raising his glass.

The banker recoiled, sank onto a sofa and felt as though a hand were squeezing his throat until he choked. It was utter disaster; it meant not only mockery of himself, but contempt for his poor Fanny, his daughter. The laughter and songs coming from the dining room lashed him like whips. He rose, felt his way to the exit and found himself once more in the entrance hall. He left the door open; out in the street he threw the key down the first drain, and, getting into another cab, gave the address of his mansion. The drawing rooms were still lit; Fanny was in the entrance hall, seeing the guests out. When they had gone, Rosálbez approached his daughter and, taking her hand, stammered:

“Be brave! Don’t be alarmed!… I have just obtained proof that the Count of Planelles is not worthy of you; that he is a scoundrel, deceiving you with the lowest of harlots. I swear it; your father swears it to you; he has just made absolutely certain of it… I shall never allow him to set foot in this house again.”

And Fanny, without arguing, white as her dress, faltered: “I shall join the Sisters of Reparation.” Looking into the future, Rosálbez saw a long succession of cold and lonely Christmases, an immense, dismal void in his life…