Outward morality was so fastidious in these families that often it was considered scandalous merely to drop the name of a famous actress or dancer, or intelligent author, or the title of a novel. During visits to the lady of the house no lips would ever mention a topic of conversation that might be considered even remotely free, and dialogues centered exclusively on religion, illness, the children’s upbringing, or questions regarding servants or property. And in a very vague way, from a very peculiar angle, politics might be commented upon.
Moral rigidity, strictly external, was no impediment to the secret practice in the heart of the most prim and proper families of the basest imaginable sexual practices, cases of vile degeneration. A respectable white-bearded gentleman, the bearer of candles and canopies in processions, might be inverted with all that such a thing entails, or a sadist might be keeping his tastes under the most cowardly wraps with the complicity of the most sordid people.
AT A TIME WHEN the amorous life of our city was not yet as big and brazen as it is today, some of those aristocrats relieved their sexual inclinations in airless, plebeian surroundings. It wasn’t at all unusual for their excitement to be focused on the stockings of a cook or the fleshy opulence of a hired wet nurse. The aristocrat who gave a diamond necklace to a dancer from the Liceu Opera, or who bedecked a seamstress in a hat trimmed with cloth camellias and the wings of an exotic bird, was considered lacking in moral fiber, a man who brought public offense to his class.
The most outstanding characteristic of houses like that of the Lloberolas was a life of isolation, spent in relations with only a very limited number of families, who attributed to one another all the moral and social value the Catalans could muster. Anyone who did not pay social visits in an open carriage with a coat of arms on the door – even if it was dilapidated – was considered inferior. Likewise any lady who did not dispose of damp and lugubrious salons with sofas upholstered in pearly silk (but with arthritic swollen legs) for her conversations with canons, generals, or seamstresses – often the only counsel available to the lady of the house.
A whole new life was emerging in Barcelona, where pirates, espadrille-makers and fugitives from the factory were becoming great industrialists, where thrifty shopkeepers who counted their pennies found themselves with enough capital to devote to new construction and the expansion of the city. Meanwhile, this unimaginative aristocracy, without a shred of initiative, was becoming deflated, impoverished, and utterly annihilated. A few members of this class of families modernized, made arrangements with those among the industrialists they might once have called common, and the occasional, shall we say, morganatic, marriage turned out to be good business for certain families. Others had the good fortune of a felicitous investment or were favored by very particular circumstances. Others, like the Lloberolas, had no choice but complete annulment, because the decadence they harbored in their blood no longer had the strength to react.
DON TOMÀS DE LLOBEROLA lived in an apartment that occupied a whole floor on Carrer de Mallorca. It was furnished in an incongruous and unappealing way with the last remnants of his time of glory. The occasional dresser or mirror that held pride of place in the history of their former house played the empty, chipped role of a relic in that space. Leocàdia, la Senyora de Lloberola, couldn’t abide seeing mercenary hands touch that furniture, so every morning, when she got home from Mass, she would set to dusting them and caressing them tenderly, as if stroking the cheeks of a paralytic old grandmother who in better days had been a holy terror.
The situation of the Lloberolas was almost invisible; if it weren’t for Frederic, who retained some contact with the upper crust – where naturally a nebulous, irregular, or precarious position is no impediment to retaining such contacts – one could say that, with the exception of their closest relatives, the Lloberolas saw almost no one, were not invited anywhere, and were never seen at any notable gatherings. Many of those who knew Frederic had never heard a word about his family, and they accepted him like any other parvenu. Leocàdia, limited by her husband’s bronchitis, and more and more scandalized by people who just laughed and squandered, acclimated her old age to a sad, pious, and housebound life.
Even though Leocàdia had never been beautiful, and an early obesity had robbed her, even when she was single, of that special excitement men used to find in bustles and leg-of-mutton sleeves, she was still a lady of refinement, delicate and docile. Leocàdia married Tomàs de Lloberola without a whit of passion, but entirely convinced that there could be no other man for her than her husband. Between her innocence and the unremitting moral norms she had bred in the bone, she accepted the bit of recreation afforded her by intimacy with a heavy, graceless, and monotonous man with the tender resignation of Sarah in the bed of Abraham. Still, always full of compunction, she would drone on in the ears of her spiritual directors with the rustling of a pious owl, resistant to pacification. The only thing that mollified her was the persuasive counsel of a prestigious priest, who told her that in holy matrimony the woman must be amenable and have a bit of patience. In time, Leocàdia found it all very natural, and even came to feel genuine love for Don Tomàs. By dint of the sort of mimicry that can be seen in some animal species and some married couples, Leocàdia began to lose her own initial refinement and her family colors, to reabsorb in her soul and display in all their variations the most banal qualities of the personality of the Lloberola patriarch.
Leocàdia adopted Don Tomàs’s family vanity. In this regard she was an old-fashioned lady, the kind who shrink and fade away in the presence of their lords and masters, never showing them up or expressing a contrary opinion. It was only with regard to her husband’s great economic disasters and absurd spending sprees that Leocàdia might timidly protest, advise, or insinuate, with that conservative and practical spirit women generally possess. Still, she was never energetic about it, but always phlegmatic, in keeping with her phlegmatic constitution, and she never managed to avert a single catastrophe.
Believing, in error, that he was at the top of his game, Don Tomàs de Lloberola continued, with an evident lack of intelligence, to make terrible business decisions. Later, in consequence, he would have to take out a loan at a usurious rate, or a second mortgage that squeezed them to the bone. Leocàdia never opened her mouth, crying in secret and chalking up to bad fortune what was nothing more than the consistent ineptitude of her husband.
Despite having served two or three times as President of the Association of Catholics, and on the board of the Committee for Social Defense, which was one of the most bovine and cloying ways of being reactionary, Don Tomàs had passed up no opportunity to be unfaithful to his wife, and the loveseats of the Liceu Opera House served more than once as a cover for certain adventures that the Senyor de Lloberola preferred to keep to himself. The always innocent Leocàdia, believing in the good faith of her husband, had fallen prey on one or two occasions to the torment of suspicion, at which point instead of crying out to the four winds, she preferred to keep her counsel and offer up her devotions to Don Tomàs’s guardian angel.
The hardest blow for Leocàdia was the sale of the family manor, which came about not because it would bring in a great amount of money, but because maintenance of the property occasioned a series of unsustainable expenses. Up to that point, she and her husband had been able to keep up appearances before their acquaintances. The word was that the Lloberolas were in a bit of a jam, but no one suspected that a family with so much history and such an important inheritance could fall apart so suddenly. Their renunciation of past splendors came to light gradually. If Don Tomàs, on realizing his situation, had simply stopped short, unsentimentally cut back, and put his cards on the table for the world to see, perhaps he could have saved a great deal more than he did, and perhaps the Lloberolas could have continued to play a relatively brilliant role. But his stubborn vanity, the centuries-long heritage of the family, and a willful insistence on pretending to have more that they had meant that his transactions and patchwor
k solutions were always negotiated more or less under the table, in the worst of conditions, and sometimes the Senyor de Lloberola – who saw himself as a real shark – ended up simply being fleeced.
The first cry of alarm announcing to Barcelona society the toppling fortunes of the Lloberolas – a special kind of protestation, containing inflections of laughter muted with phony compassion, like that of a flock of crows the scruffiest and most gossipy of which has happened upon a dead cow – went up on the feast day of Saint Hortènsia. On that day many of the ladies who went to visit the widow Hortènsia Portell saw the Gobelins tapestry that had famously presided over the green room of the Lloberolas hanging in her salon. That tapestry, one of the most magnificent of those possessed by the old families of Barcelona, was so well-known in society, and so familiar, not only to the eyes of the ladies, but even to the neighborhood shopkeepers and mechanics, who had never laid eyes on it, that when they wanted to identify the Lloberolas they would say, “that family with the tapestry.” Hence the general surprise produced in Hortènsia Portell’s salon could not have been more acidic and smeared with gossip. The question was on everyone’s lips, mixed in with theatrical variations on “Well, I never.” Hortènsia, both ashamed and amused, said, “Yes … the poor Lloberolas … you could see it coming for some time now. I got a good price for it because, as you can imagine, I am not in a position to own such a thing. But I didn’t want to let it slip away. Better for it to stay here. If not, who knows where it might have ended up!” Later, in a more intimate setting, and in a lower voice, Hortènsia would drop the tearful tones and pick up the kitchen shears that could rip out the innards of a hake without a hint of compassion.
Back then Hortènsia Portell was still a fresh and radiant widow. Blond, plump, with a lorgnette and too much make-up – elegant ladies were not yet using make-up in those days – she attracted a blend of authentic aristocracy, social climbers, artists, and men of letters. Hortènsia was known for being a free thinker, though she was both very proper and very chaste. Some of the ladies – Leocàdia among them – found her affected, common, and brazen. If indeed they didn’t dare give her the cold shoulder in public, in no event would they ever have invited her to their homes or deigned to set foot in hers. Hortènsia considered those ladies to be “démodé” and called them “old biddies,” and she made fun of their fussiness and their lack of style. Still, the truth be told, their snubs hurt her feelings, and it could be said that in the purchase of the Lloberola tapestry there was as much amour-propre and spirit of revenge as artistic enthusiasm.
The “shock” of the tapestry dissolved into fifty-thousand spoonfuls of nightly soup in the apartments of Barcelona until the shock of other sizeable sales came along, and the final thunderclap when the Lloberolas abandoned their house.
Don Tomàs’s tactic was to hide his head under his wing like an ostrich, and Leocàdia naturally followed suit, as we said before. Out of consideration, people accepted the grandiose and defensive behavior of el Senyor de Lloberola, who continued to speak of his glories in the same tone of voice as before. If at some point he made a fool of himself at the betting table he frequented in the Cercle del Liceu, the regulars pretended not to notice, and el Senyor de Lloberola would clear his throat with his usual leonine roar, convinced that no one had noticed a thing.
His two sons, Frederic and Guillem, and his daughter, Josefina, were Don Tomàs’s torment. Married off to the young Marquès de Forcadell, Josefina had escaped the conflagration and, even though she truly loved her mother, and shared her phlegmatic, dull, and acquiescent nature, her married state and the atmosphere of comfort that filled her lungs made her selfishly set foot as rarely as possible in the apartment on Carrer de Mallorca. Don Tomàs, who never bit his tongue and was an unrepentant and tempestuous pater familias with his children, loosed his harshest fulminations upon Josefina’s ample blubber, considerably sweetened by massage. He spoke of her ingratitude, lack of consideration, frivolous habits, and lack of respect, in the thorny crimson tones a good prophet might use. Josefina would weep and protest, and Leocàdia would play the role of Sarah by the side of her penniless Abraham. All she got out of it, though, was a scolding from Senyor Lloberola that sent mother and daughter fleeing in a damp veil of tears. When she got home, Josefina would tell her husband the tale, playing the part of the victim. The young Marquès de Forcadell would then declare that his father-in-law was a beast and didn’t deserve all the deference they showed him.
Frederic, whom we met in Rosa Trènor’s bed, was the hereu, the heir and firstborn. He was the spitting image of his father, and he had all the family flaws. Yet he didn’t have Don Tomàs’s theatricality or tremolo, and hence, he didn’t have his charm. Because, in spite of it all, Don Tomàs had a certain charm. Since the one had been molded with the defects of the other, Frederic and his father couldn’t stand each other. When Don Tomàs had to name a person in whom every moral calamity converged, the first name he came up with was Frederic; when his son had to conjure up the beast of the Apocalypse, he thought inevitably of his father. In early youth, Frederic had tried to study many things, but he was successful at none. His head full of the airs of the hereu to a fine household, he ended up tossing his books to the wind and deciding to live off the fat of the land. Despite the outrage and reprimands of Don Tomàs, Frederic – who at the time was convinced of the solidity of the family fortune – got his way. Partially in secret and partially in open rebellion, he prevailed over his father’s feeble objections. In his heart of hearts, his father relished having such a brilliant, modern son, with such fine taste in clothes and coveted by no few mothers. The match with Maria Carreres was not entirely satisfactory to Don Tomàs, who aspired to a daughter-in-law from the household of a duke of Madrid. Maria Carreres came from a distinguished bourgeois family, which naturally could not measure up to the shields and traditions of the Lloberolas, but she had a good dowry and seemed like an excellent young woman.
When the time came for his son to marry, Don Tomàs was feeling the pangs of insolvency. The sale of the famous tapestry coincided with the birth of his granddaughter Maria Lluïsa. From that time on, relations between Frederic and Don Tomàs became more and more grim. All Frederic wanted was to save himself. He started a business, got rapped on the knuckles with two or three bad deals, and buried his wife’s dowry on a particularly bad transaction. The Carreres and Lloberola families had a falling-out. Maria Carreres, inexpert and melodramatic, was the Iphigenia of the situation. Frederic hid his discomfort by coughing, though with less of a roar than his father at the card table of the Cercle del Liceu. With no money to throw around, Frederic felt like a cat with a can tied to its tail. Accustomed to spending heedlessly, it was a terrible blow to him to accept a post at the Banc Vitalici, a position that was unrewarding and ill-paying because the firstborn son of the Lloberolas could barely read or write. When Don Tomàs sold the house, the older and younger couples went their separate ways. Having happened upon a decent lawyer, the elder Lloberolas were able to save a sum of some importance on which to live. Don Tomàs was able to pass his son a monthly pension, since his daughter-in-law’s dowry was now nonexistent and the salary from the Banc Vitalici was a pittance. Among the properties Don Tomàs had managed to salvage was the Lloberola estate on the outskirts of Moià. He wouldn’t have given up this estate for anything in the world. To do so would have made him feel as if the imponderable liquid of his nebulous feudal ancestry were being sucked from his veins.
Even though Frederic rejected the stuffy ceremony and traditional airs of his father, and wanted to be a carefree, modern man, he still took pride in his name, his coat of arms, and his estate, which was known as the Lloberola castle. He would take his friends, including the ever-present Bobby, to hunt there as often as he could, even though they never killed so much as a pitiful heron.
Don Tomàs’s other son, Guillem, lived with his parents. There was an age difference of twelve or thirteen years between the two brothers, because Leocàdi
a was one of those unfortunate mothers who, bending with brutish submission to the insatiable task of procreation, had been cruelly compensated by a fate that conceded her only three children. All the rest were either sacrificed to miscarriages or sickly creatures who ended up in the cemetery before they had use of reason.
Don Tomàs de Lloberola was starting to feel over the hill, and had turned into a toothless lion unawares. His ailments had brought him close to Leocàdia. You might say that when his children were not around, his limp despotism was transformed into a more human and comprehending attitude. He and Leocàdia had done all they could. They had slept side by side for so many nights, they knew each others’ snores and guttural sounds so thoroughly, that from time to time, in those moments of liquid sadness old people are given to, moments empty of passion and ambition, Don Tomàs would take refuge in the winter fruit of Leocàdia’s skin, as if attempting to breathe a bit of joy into his sapped nerves.
Sometimes when the two of them found themselves at table, and Don Tomàs found the oil on the cauliflower a bit rancid or maybe he had choked on a lump in his semolina soup, he would start to spit out words of bile against his elder son or his daughter. Leocàdia would observe the volcanic explosion of her husband’s teeth and the artificial cloud of smoke formed by the scarce and untamed bristles of his moustache, speckled with semolina. As the wick of his anger burned down, Leocàdia’s pupils, veiled by an otherworldly web, would scrub the pepper from Don Tomàs’s tongue and he would finish up with a little cough and bend his head over his plate. After a moment of silence, husband and wife would look at each other in embarrassment, and the bead of a tear would shimmer in the corner of their eyes.
It was then that Don Tomàs realized that of all the fruits he had harvested in this world of vanities, all he had left was that little handful of flesh and bones, that white head, those eyes and those wandering teeth. Don Tomàs realized that, for him, love, friendship, sexual joy, and his most vibrant expectations had all come down to the smile of a whitish lady who could barely draw an easy breath, by the name of Leocàdia …
Private Life Page 4