Josep Maria de Sagarra - Private Life

We have already indicated some similarities between Maria Lluïsa and her uncle, Guillem de Lloberola. In fairness to Maria Lluïsa, it must be noted that her family couldn’t offer her any shining examples. The spectacle of her father and mother only served to unleash shamelessness and disaffection. When Maria Lluïsa was able to get a bit free of them, the bank where she worked, the staff she worked for, and her friends were all people who used toothbrushes and worked to fill their stomachs. Pat had pretty clear ideas about sports, but his concept of human dignity was mean and anemic, suffocated by mufflers, sports shirts, and insurance policies.

Maria Lluïsa had experienced these climes, excellent breeding grounds for the fatty existence of the microbe they carry in their blood, a microbe that was nothing more than atavistic fatalism and the natural consequence of the decomposition of the Lloberola family.

Maria Lluïsa’s flaws, in the days when she was nearing her twentieth birthday, were hidden under her ever-so-tender skin, her luminous and artless smile, her natural, soaring way of doing things, and her quality of pure blood and distinction that adhered even to the drabbest and most conventional sweater restraining the rigid joy of her breasts.

It was both the flaws and gifts of that young woman that brought into her life people the reader is already acquainted with. The pages to come will explain how, in human existence, whether by chance, by fate, or by predestination, names that had been separated come to be joined again. An invisible thread of some kind ties their souls together against their wills, and in the end men and women realize that they have staked all their blood on a useless farce of a game. The only thing left of it is a bit of a bad taste in the mouth and a few steps forward on the road to death.

The name of the friend who had had the two abortions was Teresa Martínez. She was older than Maria Lluïsa, and had been frequenting Rosa Trènor’s apartment for a good while. Since we abandoned Rosa Trènor at the entrance to the Grill Room, after she slashed Frederic’s face and wrapped herself in the balding skin of her beaver coat, her life had taken quite a few turns. She had cloaked her life of revelry and sentimentality in tones of respectability. When she realized that the exploitation of her body was a losing business, Rosa Trènor opted to exploit others’ bodies.

Rosa Trènor established her business with the utmost discretion. Secrecy and mystery were her accomplices. The friends of her youth and the pleasant clients of her autumn years visited Rosa Trènor’s house on the pretext of having a glass of champagne or a cup of tea. Everything else was up to Rosa Trènor, and her friends were utterly satisfied. The staff she chose for the business were girls from needy homes and even some from good families. From typists to members of the tennis club: a bit of everything. A very small and perfectly reliable staff.

At the time of the Exposició Universal, Rosa established a great friendship with an extremely important person, a general. Rosa’s every wish was his desire. At that point she expanded other facets of her little business. She bought a few thousand meters of pornographic film and she installed a baccarat table. Rosa Trènor’s apartment was on the second floor of the building, the traditional noble floor, where one would least expect such a place. A plaque on the door that read “La Aseguradora Agrícola, S. A.,” lent the landing an aura of actuarial and agricultural normalcy. The neighborhood watchman knew the score and his palm was well-greased. The attendees at Rosa Trènor’s place were the crème de la crème of Barcelona.

In that new phase of her life, Rosa Trènor was able to put her entire pretentious grande dame repertoire to use. The way she received her clients was worthy of admiration, and the blasé aristocratic smirk that settled onto her plump velvety cheeks so as to play down the importance of things, particularly when the time came to set a price, was also worthy of admiration. To enter Rosa Trènor’s apartment, one had to meet a goodly number of requirements. But for a gentleman known to some degree for his honorability and for the solidity of his bank account, it was sufficient just to present his card. The pornographic films were one of Rosa’s great ruses for reaching other things from which she could derive fatter earnings, particularly the gaming table. The Dictatorship had prohibited gambling throughout Spain, and the fact was that wagering aficionados would have done just about anything to be able to place a decent bet. Rosa Trènor’s baccarat cured no few neurasthenias among the gentry of the time. She had clients who went exclusively for the pornographic films; they tended to be all false teeth and hair more white than black. Rosa Trènor tolerated the parasites of the industry because among them were some who were considered to be the most gelatinous and influential. When the obscene film sessions in Rosa Trènor’s apartment were over, occasionally a retired general or an ancient marquis and president of a religious association would have to grab onto the banister so they wouldn’t fall down the stairs. The doctors registered many burst arteries among the most illustrious elders as a consequence of those films.

From time to time Rosa Trènor would organize custom-made sessions that she said were “for the family.” At those times the only people allowed in were certain gentlemen and ladies who were party to a secret pledge. The ladies who had the good fortune to attend one of those sessions would only refer to them with an exquisite vagueness, never going into detail. Some husbands who happened upon the lair never in their lives learned that the night before, their wives had been indisposed by a glass of lemonade owing to the upset stomach produced by the viewing of one of the most positively filthy scenes a commercial imagination can invent. Such tender and mysterious questions of chance in the life of married couples seem to have bestowed some interest on the elegant set of the times.

With the fall of the dictator, Rosa Trènor suffered serious damages. She was reported by the police and she was fortunate enough to be able to make the baccarat table and the projector of indecencies disappear in time. If she hadn’t, it was quite possible that with all her airs of grandeur she would have ended up at the prison on Carrer d’Amàlia.

In fact, Rosa avoided any substantial mishaps, and one particularly well-informed gentleman in the most sepulchral ring of a circle prone to arthritis, affirmed that Rosa Trènor had been saved by the freemasons.

With the coming of the Republic, Rosa confined herself to maintaining her best clients, who came for sentimental reasons. On Sunday afternoons Rosa would go to the Ritz, always in the company of a couple of “nieces.” Even among young men well-versed in the riddles of courtship there were many unaware of the true meaning of Rosa Trènor’s table. In that somewhat hybrid and pretentious Sunday air, Rosa played a very dignified role. Her dresses were even elegant, and her makeup was very appropriate to her forty-five skeptical years of age. When some young man would ask one of her “nieces” to dance, Rosa would cast him a maternal glance of the kind that asks the boy not to get fresh and to be considerate of the purity and excellent upbringing of the young woman who yields to his embrace to take in five minutes of tango.

Occasionally, a husband who was a client of Rosa’s would attend the Sunday session with his wife and daughters. Generally, husbands who went for tea with their families turned out to be particularly depraved. Rosa knew this very well, and between her and the husband a half hour’s dialogue would take place consisting only of three glances exchanged in such a way that not a single detail was left hanging. Many ladies went to the Ritz with a pure innocence. They were oblivious to the fact that when their husbands offered a chocolate éclair to the blondest girl in that domestic convoy, with a simple blink of the eyes he had just signed off on a conspiracy punishable by law with that dark lady across the table, who picked up a fluted neula wafer with a virginal gesture, as if she were drawing a Madonna lily close to the powdered environs of her nose.