Felipe Alfau - Chromos

“Yes, sister, please defend me. See how he treats me. See how he insults me and I cannot retaliate, because I am his son.”

Laura looked at her father in silence, long, reproachfully.

“But damn it all! Don’t be such a fool. He is a liar, a hypocrite. He was laughing behind your back. Just this minute he was laughing— Oh! He is such a. ”

“Don’t believe him, sister. He wants to turn everyone against me. He has cast me into the world, a helpless illegitimate son, and as if that were not enough, now he wants to disinherit me, to leave me in utter misery— Oh! how unjust, how unjust life is with some people!” He produced a handkerchief and put it to his eyes.

“Father. How could you do such a thing? How can you be so cruel?”

“Yes, Laura, how can he be so. ”

“Enough!” The Count was shaking all over, almost foaming at the mouth. “Get out, you damn liar! Get out! You have come to make her unhappier still. Get out or I will call the servants to kick you out!”

Paco had opened the door with a dramatic gesture. He stood there, his arms open, a crucified victim:

“Yes, I will go away. You are turning your son out of your house. That is your last abuse. I shall empty my cup of bitterness to the dregs, but I shall never lower myself to discuss money.” He addressed Laura: “Good-bye, sister. You are my only hope. You are the only one I have in this world.”

The Count laid a hand on a heavy crystal inkwell and Paco, hurriedly, as if to hide his tears, rushed out.

Laura was about to run after him.

“Stop, Laura! Don’t go after that man! Someday you will know him for what he really is.”

She slid to the floor against the door and cried for a long time.

As Paco left the palace, he felt a strong desire to kick the sumptuous staircase, but he considered its massive hardness and gave up the idea.

There followed another long-winded and pathetic analysis of Julieta’s feelings and Paco’s misbehavior. I select a few paragraphs at random:

Julieta sat alone with her children in the big house and saw the works of art, the furniture, leave piece by piece. The numerous gifts of jewelry which her parents had given her had been sold. Even her collection of shawls was sold, some of them given away, to adorn gay happy women, all but a very bright one which she liked more than the others and had hidden away.

This gives a fairly accurate idea. Here is some more:

One day a friend came to see her. Julieta had retired from society as if ashamed to face anyone she knew. This was practically the only friend she still had.

The lady saw Julieta old and worn but was too discreet to comment, a rare exception, and then Julieta told her everything, slowly, calmly, with scarcely any expression in her voice or in her action.

“He was not like that before. He was so serious when you married!”

“Yes, but the goat will go to the mountain. You see, Virginia?” And Julieta showed her friend an ugly bruise. “That’s him.”

“But I thought he was a gentleman, Julieta.”

“I wonder if he ever was. You know? He was thrown out of La Gran Peña for stealing there. Do you hear? For stealing! At least my brother stole from father and the shame remained at home, but this was public. They were kind enough not to send him to jail. They only threw him out like a filthy thing, and the few jewels I had left had to go toward paying back. He owes money to everybody.”

The interview of the heroine and her friend went on like this with more self-punishing confessions on the part of one and increasing pity on the part of the other, to end with this bit of dialogue:

“Poor Julieta!”

“Don’t pity me. Let me feel that I am also to blame, lest the injustice be too great to bear.”

Paco announced to Julieta that he had closed a deal and would have the villa torn down and an apartment house erected in its place. This would pay more.

Julieta said nothing. For some time they lived in different places while the house was demolished and the building erected. They scarcely saw each other during that long time.

When the building was finished they moved to one of the apartments while the others were yet to rent. Although it was a good apartment house, it seemed to her, after the way she had lived, a dingy sordid place. In her loneliness she thought that perhaps the new rooms coincided with the old ones, with the rooms that were. Although the rooms were smaller, she tried to imagine that they occupied the same spot of the former ones. She walked about trying to conceive that, although walking on new floors, she was moving in the same space which had once been so dear to her. She tried to conceive it but the idea escaped her; it puzzled her, it obsessed her.

Then she knew real misery. The apartments did not rent and heavy mortgages became due and took away what they had. She resorted to her brother, impelled by Paco, but his help was very slight. The jewelry shop had lost greatly; it also had big debts to meet and threatened bankruptcy. Only Ledesma’s administrative skill kept it afloat.

Fernando’s family was also larger now. In a short interval Trini had given birth to two more children: first one boy, Jorge, and then a girl, Lolita. All these things meant expenses, particularly considering Fernando’s and Trini’s vanity. They had more than one governess and several tutors for the four children, and the only one who seemed to profit by the costly education was Rojelia.

The house above the jewelry shop had also been remodeled, almost rebuilt. Fernando had all the floors connected by ornate staircases. The whole house was redecorated, even the outside, in a showy wedding cake style. Rather than have rented or bought a residence in a better spot, they seemed to like the vulgarity of that location, to be right in the heart of the city with all its disagreeable noises.

When Julieta asked Fernando for money, he was insulting and persistent about her leaving Paco. He said: “I don’t mind helping you, but I don’t want to feed that crook when I also have a family to look after.” Julieta left blushing with shame and indignation. She still resented having her husband insulted.

Ledesma tried to help her but Fernando reproached him in a manner that was almost disrespectful, and Ledesma continued to help her as best he could, out of his own pocket, and also to comfort her.

He, a decided misanthropist, who had never sought her company when she shone in society and who seemed to avoid her, was generous in his visits now that she was forsaken.

Once he was with her in the small sitting room. Although they did not speak, all those happenings were in their minds and they knew what they were thinking of. They were almost following a conversation in their minds. Then he said as if answering: “But then you should go away with your children, if only for their sake.”

“I can’t leave him, Ledesma, you do not understand.” She held his hand and looked at him very directly: “Have you ever loved, Ledesma?”

He held her eyes very intently and his lips moved in silence as if trying to say something that he could not pronounce.

Ledesma had never shown any particular age. He had looked mature ever since she had known him, but now he seemed to her very old and tired. He looked away and relaxed: “Yes, I have loved. I still love and I have never hoped.”

“But if you have loved like me, without attaining, how could you always be so calm? I never noticed anything.”

“No, you never did.”

“Because you did not really love, Ledesma. You never loved as madly as I have.” Ledesma was looking at her and his eyes were very open and very dull and there was anguish in his face. “Oh no, Ledesma! If you had loved, you would have killed yourself already. You would have wanted to kill your rival, but one cannot kill the whole world. Then you would have wanted to kill the one you loved, but in the end you would have killed yourself knowing you could not live. People who really love and are not loved kill themselves. Love is a storm of life within and, if checked, it turns against one and destroys. Those who love in vain kill themselves sooner or later.”