“I must have done,” I tartly replied, having ruined a satin shoe after stepping on one of Punto’s gifts to nature.
He whined forth, “Mamá-á-á!”
“What now!” She strode into the patio, wearing her riding-clothes, ready for an early evening ride.
Not trusting anyone, including his own mother, Javier searched our faces for signs of guilt. He exploded in childish rage.
“If anyone ate a sausage today, I’m going to punch him in the nose!”
It was no use chiding him for being twarly, by which, I mean peevish. My brother, the twarlykin, had been raised in the Andalucian way. He had acquired a quick temper when once he had none. He had learned how to fight when once he had never used his fists. He had developed a sharp tongue when once he had been all amiability and innocence.
While Doña Marisa and Felipa were in a pucker to find Punto, I volunteered to close the grated gate to prevent the rabbit’s escape since none of the servants could trouble themselves about it. At that moment, Antonio rode up to me. He sat proud in his high saddle, his skinny nag adorned with tassels and fringes of a bright hue.
“Sofía, dance a bolero for me.”
I giggled softly behind my fan, determined to flirt with him. “I must not.”
“Por favor.”
“There is no one to play the guitar.”
“Then you must dance to the music only you and I can hear,” and he gave me his castanets.
Knowing his hands had held these smooth percussion instruments, I imagined his warm palms caressing mine. And my palms burned from the impropriety of it, because a true Spanish lady never gives her hand to a man.
His sudden rhythmic clapping startled me into action. Coffee-colored eyes judged my every leap and beaten step. Ta-ria-ria-pi, ta-ria-ria-pi! I trilled the castanets, eager to please him, my body swaying and swooning to the familiar beats. Half-way done with the dance, I thought myself truly amazing for not stumbling, when, of all things, I clumsily did. His encouraging cry of “Olé salero!” flustered me. I certainly didn’t feel I had sal, or salt, which only those dancers with grace and a lively spirit possessed.
Trembling now, I missed one step and then another, my mind disturbed by the deep rumblings of the castañuela macho, the low-toned castanet. A few seconds more of the dance and I knew how it would end with me—a heap of maidenly confusion lying on the ground, in need of smelling salts. Somehow or other, I concluded the bolero, with my arms raised, my left foot suspended in the air, convinced I had done a bad job of it.
“Bien parado!” He cheered my abrupt stop to the dance.
Surely he wasn’t serious. My performance had been a downright tragedy.
“I’ll never be as good as Doña Marisa.”
He said, “You’re better than her, but don’t tell her that.”
I blushed on hearing his compliment.
“Where is she?” His roving eye searched for her.
“Oh, she’s here, somewhere, getting ready to ride,” I mumbled out, still hurt that my mother had refused to take me riding.
“Will you not accompany her to the countryside?”
His question touched me to the quick, so I invented an excuse.
“I must study and get myself educated.”
Raising a brow, he said, “No women here get themselves educated—”
“It’s an outrage against Spanish women to deny them an education.”
He laughed outright. “Women receive religious instruction and that is more than enough for them.”
“Pooh, nonsense. I am educated in all subjects by my governess, Emmerence Odet.”
“Ah, sí. It must be the English way.”
“It is our way. I have examinations for mathematics and Latin to take.”
“And when you finish them? What good can come from knowing such things?”
“My mind will be broadened.”
He teased me with, “Your brain, like Don Quixote’s, will turn dry from constant reading and studying, and you will lose your wits.”
I stamped my foot. “Not true! I shall win a prize if I score high on my examinations.”
“A prize?” He laughed softly, dismounting his horse. “My little rose-bud, I could give you a prize now if you wish and you needn’t take an examination for it.”
Placing my fan over my lips, I wondered what kind of prize he would give me. Suddenly my mouth became hot and dry. I had scarce begun to imagine myself kissing the thin black moustache that shaded his upper lip, when the bells at the Giralda, the tower of the cathedral, tolled three times—a call to devout souls each evening in this Catholic country. In an instant, the city hushed, all quiet as a dream. The carriages stopped moving. The orange-sellers stopped selling. The water-carriers stopped carrying. The devout sank to their knees—the men removing their hats, the women covering their faces with their fans. When we had done reciting the Ave Maria, a spritely tinkling of bells echoed from the tower.
And so ended my second flirtation with this majo and too soon.
There’s a joke about majos—“Es lunes, no trabajo,” or “It’s Monday, I’m not working.” There are many who regard them as idlers, but none so idle as those in Andalucía, the southernmost and hottest region of Spain.
Antonio was a conspicuous idler. He never worked on Mondays, or Tuesdays, or hardly at all at his father’s boot shop. Nor did he call on us on Mondays, and with good reason. I would have been embarrassed if he had. Mondays were the dog-days at our household, which is how I thought of them, because the domestic broils of the master and mistress always peaked on those days. Our lives became insufferable, listening to their hot furious arguments, and there was no relief.
So it was that another dog-day Monday came to pass and no Antonio. Ay me! Things had begun as usual in the morning. The cathedral bells tolled three times for the Angelus Domini, our morning prayer. Josefina, the insolent lady’s-maid, served her mistress a tiny cup of thick rich chocolate spiced with cinnamon, anise and chile. Doña Marisa requested to see me in her bedroom and she declared me a fright.
“What have you done with yourself?”
“Felipa dressed me.” I blamed my dueña as always.
“That old fool! This will not do, not do at all.”
Seriously displeased with my appearance, she made Josefina frizzle my hair to her liking. She tightened the pink sash over my white gown until I gasped for air. She made me wear a short gold jacket embroidered with black silk thread and tassels. Such a fuss never made sense to me since I was forbidden to leave home most days except to go to church. No one saw what I wore. When I did walk to church in the morning accompanied by a chaperone, I covered myself entirely in Spanish black—a large black-silk petticoat known as the basquiña, which covered my gown, and a black veil, richly laced, known as the mantilla, which I wore over the high tortoise-shell hair-comb at the back of my head.
“Why are you so brown?” She pinched my cheeks. “I told you not to go to the roof-top. Ay! You never listen.”
Ready to quit her, I simply shrugged in an insolent way.
“Not so fast, niña.” She eyed the red beads that hung round my neck.
I twisted away from her. She still coveted the beads, I was sure of it, and I coveted the orange-diamond ring she wore but not so I could flaunt it in the way she did. The rare jewel reminded me of my Portuguese grandmother, who, as the story goes, wooed her lover by turning her magic oranges into sparkling diamonds.
She sighed impatiently. “Where is your fan then?”
I groaned out loud.
After years of instruction in the language of the fan, I still got the signals wrong. I considered the whole thing a huge bore, except for the one signal I knew by heart, which was to place the open fan over my lips if I wanted to be kissed. But no one, not even Antonio, could kiss me, a young maiden. Kissing was a mortal sin, according to my dueña.
“Show me that you want to speak with me.”
Not remembering how, I simply waved her ove
r, using my fan. I thought it funny.
“You hopeless noodle,” she chided me and my bad attitude. “Now, let me see you walk.”
I took a turn round her room, it being sparsely-furnished as is the custom here. Though I did my best to walk slow, erect and graceful, it was never good enough for her.
“Such a heavy strut like an English woman! You must glide like a swan on water, with a smooth light step.” She motioned for me to try again.
So, I gave her what was surely an astonishingly graceful and light step.
“Dios mío!” She shielded her eyes from my disgrace. “You do this on purpose to give me the headache.”
It was useless to argue with her. The truth was, it mattered not how I walked, nor how she remade me as her long-lost niece—someone named Sofia-Elisabete Belles—so that I could live with her, nor how she made me address her as Doña Marisa (when everyone suspected that I was her illegitimate daughter), because I would never fit into Spanish society, her kind of society. I was too English.
“Watch and follow me. You must walk with the confident air of a woman, one who can step straight into a man’s heart, and know how to react with pleasure when he addresses you.”
With her tiny feet turned out, she demonstrated her alluring walk, taking short steps in her pointed shoes. And when an imaginary suitor complimented her beauty—What eyes! What grace!—she parted her lips and fluttered the heavy lashes framing her playful half-concealed eyes. How absurd the whole thing was. She, sensing my mockery of it, dismissed me in a huff.
“You! I shan’t take you to la calle Sierpes to see the matadors.” She loved to stroll and to see and be seen on the winding Street of the Serpents, and she assumed everyone else did as well.
I shot her a defiant look. “O fie! You do me a favor then, Doña Marisa, because I don’t care a fig for it.”
She retorted something, and I retorted in kind, and on and on it went. My father, if he had heard this, would be appalled by my outbursts, and so I would be if I weren’t me. But when you have lived in and experienced the burning climate of Andalucía and suffered greatly from the dusty hot wind known as the solano, enough to drive you mad, you quickly learn that extreme excitability and temperaments rule, restraint and moderation go unheeded. Even my governess Emmerence, the queen of serenity, became crabbed and snappish on the worst of days.
It being nearly a quarter past seven already, Doña Marisa wished for me to be gone. And so, with happy feelings of escape, I joined Emmerence in the patio before we walked to church. She stood there, leaning her head sideways against a column, a letter in her hand. “Good morning to you,” we greeted each other. We sat in our usual place next to the Moorish mosaic fountain, where the servant brought us cups of chocolate, thick and hot. I averted my eyes, trying my utmost not to stare at her letter sitting on the table.
“The letter is from Lord Scapeton. He has sent some instructions.”
His lordship, my father’s elder brother, had written?
“I hope my uncle is in good health.”
“Yes, he is,” was her laconic reply.
I wondered if the widowed lord—a worldly man, though some might call him a mature dandy—still suffered bouts of melancholy after the loss of his young wife who had borne him a son. Lady Scapeton had been his perfect wife, with a perfect dowry and connections. Even so, I don’t think he had been perfectly happy.
“Does he say anything about my father?”
She reached out to touch my hand. “He fears that … your father’s health can never be fully restored. I’m truly sorry, Sofia.”
“Oh, my poor father.” Tears filled my eyes.
After a while, she said, “His lordship will travel from Paris to Bordeaux, and then onward to Madrid, to conduct business there.”
“Madrid? Has he come to fetch me home to England?” A fit of homesickness seized me.
Emmerence shook her head. “You must continue on in Spain.”
Three years prior, his lordship had hired Emmerence to serve as my governess. She had sailed from Genoa to Cádiz, a member of his traveling party, after which, he put her on a steam-boat bound for Sevilla. She brought with her a pedal harp and a trunk of books—these being gifts for me from his lordship. He had used her and these things to soften the blow, that he was not coming to Sevilla to see me, nor was he allowing me to return to England with him. He wrote me a terse letter instead, simply to say that my father couldn’t take care of me anymore.
“I don’t understand why my uncle avoids me. He hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you.” Changing the subject, she asked, “Do you recall when we first met in Brieg during your travels with Doña Marisa?”
“You were ten and I was five. I thought you the most beautiful girl in Switzerland with your long brown braids and big brown eyes. You taught me how to yodel.”
She gave a refined laugh. “We were girl explorers together. I’ll never forget how Doña Marisa saved me from a life of poverty, and then, with Lord Scapeton’s generous financial support, she arranged for my education at the convent in Genoa.”
For some reason, the red beads on my neck turned fearfully cold.
She went on in a quiet tone, “I owe a debt of gratitude to his lordship—”
“As do I, for bringing you to Spain.”
“—but, in a few years, you will no longer need me as your governess.”
I hung my head, unable to speak. We had become as close as sisters, a circumstance that never endeared her to Felipa, my jealous dueña, who wished to be my sole chaperone and governess, and who complained that Emeranza, which was how she sarcastically referred to her rival, should instruct me in Latin and nothing else.
We had been silently sipping our chocolate, each of us lost in thought, when Doña Marisa burst into the colonnaded corridor. She complained loudly, knowing her husband and everyone could hear her; for, on the ground floor, and each floor, all around, the doors of the rooms faced open to the center patio.
Dog-day Monday had begun.
Doña Marisa blasted her husband in a rapid fire of Castilian. Don Rafael fired back from within, “Soon ripe, soon rotten!” And he punctuated each word with explosions—bom! bom!—by pounding his fist on what sounded like his big mahogany desk. He then grumbled about his need for money, and she grumbled about his gambling, and he grumbled about the household expenses, and she grumbled about his second household.
Doña Marisa depended on her husband for pin money. With the exception of her orange-diamond ring, the erstwhile bolero dancer owned no separate property, unlike other women of her class. Nor had she brought a dowry upon her marriage. Money was always a matter of contention between them. Thus, these arguments about money lasted the entire day until the cathedral bells tolled three times at sunset for the Ave Maria, the angels intoning, “Peace. Peace. Peace.”
In a fret, Doña Marisa took me aside. “Listen to me, daughter. You must never betray my love for you.”
I thought her strange. “I would never betray you.”
“But a daughter always leaves her mother by marrying and moving far, far away, instead of staying close to console her mother as she sinks into dotage.”
“I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”
She tugged one of my ringlets. “Ah, but you want to. I know you still hope your father will recover so that you study-brains can be—how do you say in your English school-boy talk?—muffies together—”
“Muzzes,” I corrected her.
“—while I remain here, shriveled up, and rotting without any teeth.” She sniffled.
“Oh, mamá.” I sighed, hoping she wouldn’t explode into tears and cause a scene, the way mothers often do.
“Come, now, give me a kiss—me and my decaying teeth,” and she began to sob.
I thought her doubly strange. Doña Marisa was so fond of her toothbrush that, unlike other Spanish women who ruined their teeth with sweetmeats, she still possessed two front teeth and many others besides. Often tim
es I caught her at the looking-glass, pleased with her appearance and her perfectly straight teeth—except for one stubborn tooth that partially stuck out, most noticeably when she smiled. “Teeth, teeth, do not abandon me,” demanded she, and smile she would at her reflection, pressing on her wayward tooth as if doing so would make it go straight.
At times such as these, I wish I had never come to Sevilla. How could I have foreseen that her whole existence consisted of flirting and gossiping and quarreling? The sad truth was, the longer I remained with my mother, the less time I really spent with her, as though my very existence had become an annoyance. A foundling once upon a time, I was the daughter she both wanted and didn’t want. And although I had forgiven her for the past, for giving me up when I was an infant, it seemed that I would have to forgive her a thousand times more, and a thousand times after that.
Now that I think on it, I wasn’t the only one that she both wanted and didn’t want. When dog-day Monday ended, Don Rafael went to his mistress, Doña Lucía—she, who had borne him four children. He took Javier with him, and the three of them went to the countryside where these other children lived with a distant relation. They would be gone for days.
With Don Rafael away at his second household, Doña Marisa became happy and, once she was happy, everyone else could be happy. I filled my hours with happy thoughts of Antonio, dreaming of when we would speak alone. Scraps of paper with his name written on them—Antonio, Antonio, Antonio—lay hidden under my mattress, under a loose brick in the floor and stuck between the pages of my favorite novel. Once, I even ate one of these scraps when Felipa came into my room unannounced. “You are Sofía la Loca!” and she shook her head at my craziness.
Sofía la Loca wanted more than anything to learn the secret behavior of lovers and how to make Antonio hers. She cared not that Emmerence, who had caught her scrawling his name inside the big hearts she had drawn, disapproved of him.
“Oh, Sofia, he’s a silly dandy.”
I frowned at her. “Better a dandy than a bully, I say.”
“How can you suit each other?”
Only Sofia-Elisabete Page 2