Bea Gonzalez - The Mapmaker’s Opera

But never had a cushion been reserved for the head covering of a simple priest!

Doña Fernanda had repeated her command on that day and had done so in such a way that the servant, no fool himself, knew that she too realized the idiocy of her request, that she hated giving the command nearly as much as the good servant hated receiving it, but that some things in life came at a steep price. What those things were, Raimundo could not even hazard a guess, but he could think no improper thoughts of her—not out of any respect, but because it seemed inconceivable that even a character as decrepit and despicable as Don Pedro could want anything improper with the lady of the house. And so Raimundo placated his ire by complaining unendingly about the situation to the servants under his command.

As the scene began, Don Pedro was arriving at a quarter to four, late for his customary appointment with Doña Fernanda. It was a hot day in Seville, hotter than usual for May and the unseasonable heat, coupled with Doña Fernanda’s anxiety over the appearance of yet another dot on her imaginary map, had stewed inside of her to such an extent that by the time Don Pedro rolled in—not, in the end, more than ten minutes late—she had almost resolved to decline receiving him at all.

If only she didn’t need him so.

It is tragic to be burdened with a lack of confidants on whom anxieties can be deposited and whose kind words can erase fears, those imagined and those real, but Doña Fernanda—with her curt demeanour and imperious ways—had managed to alienate everyone but the priest and thank God for the sanctity of his robes, she thought, for many were the secrets she shared with him, always in confessional tones, so that the sanctity of his own vow to secrecy would compel him to keep her words guarded deep inside his breast.

(It did not. Don Pedro did not consider Doña Fernanda’s confessions to be received in his capacity as a priest but as a respected guest who— ojo, señores —was even offered a cushion for his hat. Indeed he poured fuel on many a good hostess’s fire who—for the price of a paltry dish of garbanzos and beef—could learn of the goings-on inside the house of Don Ricardo Medina as if from the mouth of Doña Fernanda herself.)

What ailed Doña Fernanda on most occasions were those dots—markers of her husband’s infidelities—and her husband’s infidelities were the stuff of legend in Seville, a city well accustomed to legends of the sort because it was home, after all, to Carmen, the Barber and Don Giovanni himself.

Madamina, il catalogo è questo. One thousand and three and counting still.

It was yet another indiscretion that had the señora in a state on this day, that had her brimming with anxiety and despair, that hardened her to the many entreaties of Don Pedro to “please forgive me for being late” and “Señora, I am at your feet” and so on until he finally tired of entreating and she tired of hearing him beg.

(“It is amazing, Rosita,” he would tell his sister later, speaking of Doña Fernanda, “that our fair Seville ever produced a slab of stone such as this!”)

“Give your hat to Raimundo,” Doña Fernanda told the priest gruffly, “and sit down quickly, as we have little time and much to discuss.”

“I am at your service, Señora, as always of course,” Don Pedro replied with relief, for he would have hated not to have been forgiven especially because this exchange had been conducted before the insufferable master servant of the house. The same servant had just smirked at him —I am sure of this, he would tell his sister later—as he placed the priest’s hat on the cushion, bowing his way in such an exaggerated manner that Don Pedro knew for sure Raimundo was having a laugh at his expense. And though his blood boiled at the thought of the man’s impertinence, he knew nothing could be said. Some exchanges are conducted so that only the parties involved recognize all the undertones. Doña Fernanda, blind to anything that did not affect her directly, would frankly not have cared had she perceived the injury in any case.

For the next hour the priest paid for his tardiness by having to sit there immobile (not even a drink of agraz was offered this time) as Doña Fernanda embarked upon one of her more vicious tirades—her waiting having made her mood all the more virulent—in which every bone of her husband’s body was put at risk through the enumeration of an impressive array of threats, none, of course, which would ever be realized—this was nineteenth-century Spain after all, and Andalucía yet, where well-to-do men spend Sunday afternoons promenading with wives and children and the evenings with mistresses or whores inside the brothels of Granada and Seville.

So you see, a little indiscretion was not so bad, at least in the larger scheme of things.

Doña Fernanda, it is true, had been bearing the weight of her husband’s many indiscretions quite some time—for it must be said now that she and Don Ricardo did not marry for love; such a luxury could ill be afforded by the more prominent families of the day. The trick was to marry into one’s social circle and forever maintain a stiff inglés upper lip. But Doña Fernanda, a martyr till the end, had never maintained a stiff upper lip, inglés or otherwise.

“This time it is worse, Don Pedro, infinitely worse, for it is happening here, inside my own house. Of this I am sure. Ricardo has always hid his indiscretions badly but this one he is not even bothering to hide at all. Virgen Mara Purísima, the things I am forced to accept.”

The governess. Don Pedro knew it had to be the governess—she was the only one young enough in the household to have attracted Don Ricardo’s eye—a lecherous eye, that one, he would tell his friend Doña Ana later. How that eye ever found itself resting on Doña Fernanda’s face was one of God’s greater mysteries, although marriage was not made for the sins of the heart—even a simple priest like him was certain of that.

For the next hour he sat listening without interjecting anything other than the usual exclamations of Oh and Ah —the signs of outrage expected of him at the appropriate times, as Doña Fernanda vented her rage. “Oh, God, how difficult it is to have been born woman,” she railed until, spent, she finally allowed him to excuse himself. It was almost five by then and he was to give a Mass to free from purgatory the soul of a certain Don Calixto, who had managed to sire six illegitimate daughters throughout his long life, the news of which was snaking its way along the streets of Seville.

“Then do not bother with the Mass, Don Pedro,” Doña Fernanda told him, her nostrils pinched, her head held high, “for that man is not in purgatory, but in Hell roasting along with the rest of the world’s libertines.”

On his way out, Don Pedro made sure to take the insufferable servant aside and, far from the ears of Doña Fernanda, lecture him on proper conduct and the respect that should be granted to the priests who had taken the Sacrament of the Holy Orders: “For there is no greater Sacrament than that, you ignorant peasant—a sacrament that makes one responsible, lest you should forget, for seeking absolution for the miserable likes of you. But only, oye bien, when and if they like.”

And with these words barely out of his lips the priest grabbed the hat from the servant’s hands and turned to leave but not before being subjected to one last bow from Raimundo, a bow lower than any bow ever delivered the priest’s way so that the servant’s nose came to touch the floor and his ample behind rose high in the air saluting the heavens from where, it is supposed, God himself watched the scene unfold in silent repose.