Josep Maria de Sagarra - Private Life

But the Pilar Romaní of the portrait precedes by many years the initial events of the story we are writing. When Bobby escorted Frederic to Mado’s house, the widow Xuclà was a matron well into her seventies; she and Bobby, the only child she had with the Semite banker, still lived in her house on Carrer Ample.

In her dotage, the widow Xuclà had been seized by the intransigence of social caste regarding the growing materialism and loss of control of Barcelona society. This genuine lady, who had caused such scandal as a young woman with her democratic and slightly uncouth attitudes, brandished the very same rigidity of which she had been the victim in her day against the loosening of principles that affected the beauties of the present day. When they told her Senyoreta X had taken as a gigolo a store clerk whose only merit was to have built up his biceps a bit at the Club Nàutic, or that Senyora R. had mortified her husband by word and deed before a gathering of young men at the golf club, and that yet another lady had taken a taxi to a meublé on the Diagonal, or that the Baronessa de T., in the midst of her divorce proceedings, had made an appearance at a cabaret only attended by prostitutes and the occasional inexperienced married couple from the provinces, Pilar Romaní was filled with indignation. Not in the tone a lady of Leocàdia’s temperament might have used, but in that of an old fox who has seen it all, but who still demands a bit of etiquette and a bit of dignity even in unavowable affairs. Though Pilar Romaní had been broadminded and paid little heed to the morality of her times, there were some lines she had been very careful not to cross. She had been careful to drape even her vices or caprices in a romantic gauze, revealing only a delicate silhouette of poetry and distinction. Even though she and Ripoll had caused tongues to wag, still the painter had been no vulgar passion, and Pilar Romaní had taken care to embroider the letters of a sentimental, mentholated novel on their relationship. When she spoke of these outrageous young women, the widow Xuclà would use her own very picturesque and somewhat crude way of speaking, which in time had turned rather bitter. Sometimes a phrase uttered by Pilar would subsequently be reported in a half dozen places, commented upon, laughed at by the men and sharpened to a fine point, whereupon inevitably it would reach the ears of the woman in question. Behind Pilar Romaní’s back, her humor was considered the “tantrums of a doddering old witch,” but no one dared say such a thing to her face.

In time, the widow Xuclà suspended her get-togethers and visits and called on fewer and fewer homes. Among the very few exceptions was the home of Hortènsia Portell. If Hortènsia threw a party, Pilar Romaní’s presence was assured. She would enter with the air of a queen, and all the ladies yielded to her. They would needle her to get her talking. Some days she would be gloomy and reserved, and would pretend to be deaf for conversations that went too far. Other days she would be in a friskier mood, and she would nibble away in the sharp and dainty way of a ferret. The widow Xuclà’s clothing was always a bit old-fashioned, in shades perhaps too light and bright for a lady of her age. She was tall and strong; no one could have guessed her age. She was a magnificent specimen, and her wrinkled and shrunken features still resisted old age to reveal the traces of a great beauty.

The widow Xuclà would attend Hortènsia Portell’s salon, above all, out of a particular liking for that plump, fashion-conscious woman, and because in Hortènsia’s circle of vulgar elegance she could still find the occasional intelligent man. He would be a sad, skeptical character without pretensions with whom she might enjoy a long conversation about Catalan affairs and hear a few things that might have a bit of spirit and spark. Pilar Romaní no longer learned of anything on her own account. She read no newspapers, nor any new books. She lived off her memories. All art and literature had come to a stop for her before the War in Cuba, when she would invite the people of sensibility of the day to her house on Carrer Ample. Pilar Romaní was of the opinion that the best things had come and gone, that the literati wrote so that no one would understand them, that modern art — her idea of modern art was more quirky than she herself — was insufferable, and that painters were bent on making life ugly and deforming the grace of things.

She would criticize some young women’s lack of taste, their unattractiveness, their absolute ignorance, their precarious ambition, their lack of personality and resulting willingness to be swept away entirely by what was au courant and fashionable. She would criticize the cowardly morality of some, and the inexcusable lack of modesty of others, and what most disgusted her was the snobbish enslavement to the latest thing and to American fashion. She bemoaned the loss of character and the mongrelization that had swept Barcelona. The big fashion houses and the automobile had leveled everything out. Pilar Romaní couldn’t countenance the fact that, simply because she possessed a magnificent Hispano-Suiza automobile, a woman who had come from who knows where was invited to dinner and supper at the homes of the daughters of the same old aristocratic dowagers who years before had hung her out to dry.

The widow Xuclà had a penchant for going off on her own. Many mornings she would go out with her chauffeur and barrel down the highway until she found a nice place where, with the help of her eyeglasses, she might work on a sweater for the daughter of the concierge or for some member of her household staff. The widow Xuclà took an enormous interest in people of more humble condition. She liked to talk with the workingmen and the servants, and in the summer she would spend long hours with the people who tended her land. She was lavish, and generous to a fault, and a tear or two was enough to take her for all she was worth.

Her true friends were few and far between. She was close to another lady of her time, a distant relative, the Marquesa de Descatllar. She was more acid-tongued and more class-bound than Pilar Romaní, and she was absolutely outrageous. The marquesa had been separated from her husband for many years, and in her case it was absolutely true that she had no relations at all with anyone. Pilar Romaní always defended her in her circle, maintaining that she was a true lady and had been very unfortunate. The marquesa had a dark complexion and hard, virile features. She went around with narrowed eyes as if everything disgusted or infuriated her. No matter what turn fashion took, she always wore a bunch of dyed black bird-of-paradise feathers hanging over her forehead. They looked as if they had been plucked from the headdress of a cannibal leader. Stories were told of shameful contact between the marquesa and brutish subjects of the lowest extraction. In the afternoon she would often go to the Paral·lel with her chauffeur and her manservant to see bawdy shows or revues with a great deal of naked flesh on display. She would generally sit half-hidden in a box seat on the mezzanine. Pilar Romaní would occasionally accompany her on these theatrical excursions. They had a particular liking for Catalan vaudeville, with beds and underwear onstage.

From a distance, the marquesa had a magical effect. In the days when only two-horse carriages traveled up and down the Passeig de Gràcia, the marquesa, dark and solitary in her open sedan, contrasted with the pale cream, pea green or turquoise blue mistresses under their monumental hats, complemented by a dog who might have been stolen from a Van Dyck canvas.

At the height of summer, the Marquesa de Descatllar and Pilar Romaní always went abroad together. Some years they would go to Marienbad, but later, as they got older, they found the trip too long. Then they wouldn’t get any farther than the baths at Luchon, or they would drop in for a few days at Biarritz.