Josep Maria de Sagarra - Private Life

A half or three-quarters of an hour later, the Frenchman returned. The Monk took him up to the room, and the Frenchman turned the lock on the door. He got undressed in the dark so as not to awaken Dorotea. When he got into bed, he felt the wet stickiness of the blood. The alarmed Frenchman must not have imagined that things could have reached such tragic proportions because he had the wherewithal to say, “ Voyons, ma belle! Pas de blague! …” When he put his hand under her left breast he felt the knife. The excitable Frenchman squealed like a pig being pulled by the tail. He was naked, he was locked in that room with a dead woman, he was filthy with blood. Dorotea’s body was still warm. The man wasn’t so unthinking as not to realize that his situation was deeply compromised. By the time he got dressed, cried out, they would be upstairs … His mysterious errand was perhaps the only place where he could find a defense, yet in that moment he felt it simply made him look more guilty. The man felt defeated. He called downstairs, said two incomprehensible words, and dropped back down onto the bed, lacking the resolve to get dressed, staring at his hands, his chest, his stomach, his legs, his whole body, helpless and covered in blood.

Ranalies answered the phone and called for the police patrol who were just a few steps away from the meublé . A couple of guàrdies civils , always in the vicinity, also rushed right over. Ranalies called for the second servant, who was on the top floor. The third man on duty had already gone to answer the door, and he ran into Ranalies just as he came back from calling for the police. They all went up to the room. The Frenchman was screaming like a madman, crying, incapable of getting dressed, incapable of unlocking the door. The Frenchman said over and over again that he was innocent, but no one believed him. They tied him up, he went up before the judge in a state of exhaustion, and everything that happens in such cases happened …

The testimony of Ranalies and the other two servants left no room for doubt. Even worse, as the Frenchman told his story, the judge was laughing up his sleeve. Everything pointed to him, everything conspired against him. Who could doubt the staff, Ranalies in particular, who had been in service at that house for so long? What interest could any of the staff have in committing a crime like that? When the woman was identified and the newspapers said that the body belonged to Dorotea Palau, the well-known dressmaker, a great consternation spread among many ladies from the best families: “Poor Dorotea! Who could have imagined it? She seemed so decent, so utterly beyond reproach!”

The only person who breathed a bit easier on hearing of the crime was the Baró de Falset. Guillem de Lloberola wasn’t the slightest bit moved, nor did it take him by surprise: “What other end could a hag like Dorotea come to?” is what Guillem thought.

Antoni Mates thought that Dorotea’s disappearance left one less person to compromise him. Dorotea had been silenced forever more. Antoni Mates had stopped going to the Club Eqüestre. He hadn’t seen Frederic in ages, and had no desire to run into him. Frederic felt the same way. Since Frederic had been saved, he had no interest in further analysis of the details, but when he was all by himself he couldn’t help thinking that what he and his brother had done was not very clean. Frederic also did his best to avoid Guillem. Guillem, on the other hand, radiated satisfaction … A newcomer to actual fraud, he derived great pleasure from both the game and the adventure of it. He hadn’t yet reached the stage of disappointment. We won’t call it remorse because that would be excessive, but a sort of sadness of mere routine does ultimately take over, even for someone who is collecting a string of murders.

Guillem considered the Baró de Falset a repugnant and cowardly scorpion, without a drop of venom. He didn’t merit a moment of regret. Guillem believed he was doing society a favor by morally eroding a man like the Baró de Falset, squeezing money from him as if from a sponge. Guillem was wielding the most vile and criminal of weapons, but he didn’t see that, or preferred not to. He thought that high-stakes swindling put one in a brilliant position, as vivid and as human as allowing oneself to be nailed to a cross. He enjoyed the artistic voluptuosity of the game, and like a coward he accepted the venal turpitude and all the economic profit he could derive. Guillem was thirsty for fine suits and fine ties, dinners in fine restaurants, and sleeping with fine women. Once he had dared to blackmail a man of the category of the Baró de Falset, the scorn he felt for his father and for all his family’s prejudices was only exacerbated. A satanic, but still immature, flora grew within the bookish depravity of the younger Lloberola. In men’s hearts two phenomena carry tremendous sexual force: the first is the thrill of lowering oneself, of squatting like a dog, and suffering discomfort and physical pain to draw closer to divinity, the same idea of divinity and integral union with God that some mystics of monotheism have aspired to by means of these somewhat sadistic procedures. The other phenomenon, full of sensual intensity, consists of stifling within oneself any reminiscence of fear or mercy, any of the apparently irreducible religious and moral subconscious that is present even in frigid temperaments, until one has achieved the absolute absence of shame or scruples in the face of any situation. In his puerile, twisted and literary way, Guillem leaned toward the second of these phenomena.

Guillem decided to blackmail the Baró de Falset again. He formulated his plan in writing, a marvel of composition. Having the authentic letter from Antoni Mates in his possession, Guillem was able to pose the affair in such a way as to assign himself no role in the shameful events at the heart of the extortion. The document explained the carryings-on of the married couple with a third person, whose name did not appear, but whose existence Guillem could certify, as he had come to know the facts through the confession of the person in question. Moreover, in light of Antoni Mates’s social position, the third person was of very little consequence. As proof, Guillem submitted the evidence of the previous extortion, and the irrefutable testimony of the baron’s letter to his brother. In the event Antoni Mates didn’t wish to deliver the amounts requested to Guillem, he would find a way to spread the defamatory news wherever it would be most prejudicial. Still, Guillem didn’t believe he would have to go so far, and he always assumed that the baron would pay up.

Two days after hearing the news of Dorotea Palau’s murder, Guillem requested another meeting with Antoni Mates. Flustered and practically jumping out of his own skin, naturally the baron conceded it to him. Guillem was paid a considerable sum. Mates handed it over with relative dignity, considering the panic and rage that consumed him. A short time later, Guillem turned the screws a little tighter. At that point the baron lost control, cried, groveled, threatened to kill Guillem and then begged Guillem to kill him, to free him of this torture. In the end, the baron gave in. Guillem performed magnificent demonstrations of serenity, cold-bloodedness, soullessness. After he had paid Guillem, the baron attended a very important board meeting. They were preparing for the Exposició Internacional on Montjuïc. Those were the days of the most unrestrained squandering of the dictatorship, and the Baró de Falset anticipated magnificent returns. This was where his brilliant and splendid reality lay; he hid his tortures, his fear and the secret and unutterable reality deep within his breast. The baron wondered if he was the victim of strange hallucinations. When push came to shove, the young man could say whatever he liked. What of it? Who would believe him? And if they did believe him, then what? The baron would recover his serenity for a few days but then, every so often, he would remember the letter he had written and the fear would return. It was the infamous letter that kept him up at night. He could have gone to Frederic and demanded that he return the document, throwing in his face his indelicacy in not having burned the letter, as he had requested. But he would soon desist because that would have exposed him, and muddied the waters, when what he most wanted was for the waters to stay nice and quiet, and for not a word to be breathed.