Only Sofia-Elisabete

by Robin Kobayashi

“He suits me in every respect,” spoke my obstinate self.

  Surely that strange, nervous, queasy feeling I felt was proof of a robust love. I decided to ask my dueña about it since she was married, though she rarely saw her spouse.

  “Felipa, do you get a strange, nervous, queasy feeling when you see your husband?”

  “All the time.”

  “Does it ever go away?”

  “Only when he does,” and she crossed herself.

  Not long after, Doña Marisa’s particular friends called on her. In my restricted world, the world within our white-washed mansion, I learned what I could of love from Doña Marisa and her friends—the three señoras. One was an opera singer, another a poet who wrote under a man’s name, and the other—the most beautiful of the three—knew royalty and every grandee of Spain. They and my mother relished idle gossip, and they rarely spoke of anything serious that mattered.

  “O Dios!” “How hot the morning is.” “Summer has come much too early.” The three señoras complained all at once, tossing their basquiñas to the servants. They flitted here and there like butterflies in bright underdresses of French design, never content to stay in one place for long. Eventually, they settled themselves beneath the jasmine bower to smoke their pachillos, those little straws of tobacco wrapped in maize leaves, and to entertain themselves with gossip.

  “Doña Bianca threw a clay pot at her husband,” said Doña Marisa, lighting her pachillo with a small cup of embers that I had brought her. “He gambled away their mansion.”

  “Idiot!”

  “Old Benita, the bald one, caught Juan López clambering over the convent wall, the night of the full moon,” said the opera singer, and she blew a cloud to the heavens.

  “At his age?”

  “He must be over seventy.”

  I suppressed a giggle at this old man’s love-making exploits.

  “I observed Lidia Medina slipping into church one evening, about four months ago,” said the poet, puffing energetically on her pachillo. “They say that Padre Félix will provide for the child and give Lidia a small dowry.”

  “That rogue!”

  “At least he bestowed the benefit of the clergy on her.”

  “With her small dowry, she can get a husband.”

  Now I understood why women were not allowed in church during the evenings. Even so, this Lidia had not been ruined.

  “My niece Rita desired her old bridegroom to come and prove himself,” said the beauty, the smoke streaming from her nostrils. “She did not find the ancient hidalgo to her satisfaction, and now, the marriage contract is void, and she remains a thirteen-year-old maiden.”

  “She’ll be sorry yet.”

  “You know what the men say—”

  “Soon marriageable, soon barren.”

  Did they mean “soon ripe, soon rotten”? My brain tingled. Those were the words that Don Rafael had used yesterday. Surely he hadn’t been speaking of me?

  Friends here are rarely asked to dine with family. Once the three señoras took their leave, we ate the ubiquitous olla podrida—the national dish, half-soup, half-stew, eaten by everyone, rich and poor alike, day after day after day. Following that, we ate several more courses heavily seasoned with garlic and oil, and then we took the afternoon siesta for two hours, sleeping on straw mats, with the curtains drawn upon the balconies to keep out the sun. My dueña, who snored like a horse, made it impossible for me to rest.

  Escape, therefore, became a habit of mine. I climbed up to the roof-top terrace, where, as usual, it was a wash-day, the linen hanging to dry in the hot sun, so unseasonably hot that day it could scramble your eyes unless you covered your head with a fan. Perched high above the street, I espied the boundless plain beyond the city walls, the lofty tower of the Giralda and the thorny spires of the cathedral; and, in another direction, the bridge of boats floating on the river Guadalquivir. The entire city was abloom with orange-blossoms, the air thick with sweet citrus scent.

  I chanted, “Red beads, help me, emancipate me, bring Antonio to me,” but nothing came of it, even after I repeated seven Paternosters and five Ave Marias.

  How I yearned to explore and to see Antonio again but, being a proper maiden, I had no business out on the streets. Felipa once said that a woman must go out but thrice in her life-time—to be christened, to be married, to be buried. For these reasons, I rarely saw anything of the city. Nor did I see its lovers promenading each evening on the Paseo de Las Delicias, the tree-lined walk alongside the river, but I heard them stirring each night, with their serenades under the moonlight and the muffled chatter of their castanets. How could I, a girl in my teens, ever learn about love when I had never seen a serenade close by?

  At long last I got my wish of it. That evening, Doña Marisa tied a red carnation with ribbon to the balcony—a signal for her latest admirer. Sure enough, the love-trick worked, and a buffoon whom she called Don Pepe, arrived to serenade her, thrumming his guitar which was sadly out of tune. He bawled out one passionate song in his cracked baritone, ready to split his throat, and then he tried another, until finally, he guessed his lady’s favorite—“You are the queen who rules my passion.” She tossed the red carnation to him.

  “What will Señor Gonzalez say about Don Pepe?” I asked her, worried that her long-standing cortejo, her gentleman escort, would be cast off yet again in favor of another. Poor, poor Sábado Gonzalez. I rather liked him.

  “Hush!” Her green eyes sparked with fire. “Sábado needn’t know about it. He is still in Valencia, working on his secret book.”

  “I don’t see how it’s a secret if everyone knows about it.”

  “Ay! Must you always be difficult, Miss Know-all? Secrets are never secret for long.”

  It occurred to me, then, that she desired to be caught with an admirer, to make Señor Gonzalez jealous once the news reached him. In Doña Marisa’s world, to be jealous was to be passionate, to be submissive was to be dull, whereas, for a cortejo such as Señor Gonzalez, to be jealous was to be loyal, to be submissive was to be devoted.

  The evening next, I got another chance to learn more love-tricks. Doña Marisa gave a tertulia, a festive gathering for certain acquaintances of hers. For the first time in a long while, she permitted me to be up after midnight. “Please, please, make her invite Antonio,” I whispered to myself in a fit of despair. It had been days since I last saw him.

  Lanthorns strung from the gate to the patio lit up the trees and flowers to create a fairyland. Fragrant bouquets, pyramids of sweetmeats and cups of spiced chocolate, that food for the gods, crowded the tables. Guests played at cards—hombre and primero—in our opulently furnished saloon, the one room of note in our home, with its beech-wood furniture covered with crimson damask, and its gilt-framed mirrors hung on the walls. Strolling musicians played upon their guitars and sang boleros—“Viva Sevilla! Viva Sevilla!”

  Doña Marisa was queening it, surrounded by her many admirers. Beautiful and youthful in appearance, she wore a white rose behind her ear. One would never guess her age of thirty-two. She gave the cigar she had been puffing to Don Pepe, who accepted this great compliment and set out to finish it. A hairy man named Señor Oso wished to try a bolero with her, but she declined, saying women of her class did not dance.

  I nearly laughed out loud, because she had met Antonio this way, when she and the three señoras danced about the city, disguised as majas—the alluring and defiant women who wore tight bodices and short petticoats adorned with tassels and filigree and lace. That was when she learned how to use a navaja, a folding-blade knife, which she carried in her garter during her night ramblings. Dark and fierce-like she could be, with a temper to match. “I am born to love and to fight like a tigress,” she liked to boast. Had she charmed Antonio that way?

  He still hadn’t arrived. Gazing upon the night sky, I said a novena for the loneliest and most forgotten soul in purgatory who lived on a star, and I asked to see my majo again. Then, at midnight, when I had nearly given up ho
pe, Antonio strode through the open gate, his countenance glowing with manly Andalucian pride. He wore crimson breeches tight across the hips, pointed brown shoes, an embroidered shirt complemented by a bright neckerchief, and a velvet jacket covered with ribbons and silver buttons. His hair was bound in a silk net, and atop his head he wore a sugar-loaf hat—a pointed black hat set at a rakish tilt. The female guests whispered in excitement, “The handsome majo is here.”

  Antonio glanced at Doña Marisa as he drank down a glass of iced water with a sugar-sponge in it. He noticed me finally, and he gave me an encouraging nod. In response, I placed my open fan over my chest. He raised his brow at me. Confused, I quickly turned the fan around, the design now facing him. This made him smile. As he approached, I waved my fan very slowly; that is, until my dueña, who stood behind me, pinched me on my side.

  She hissed out, “Tonta! How do you expect to get him, with your mixed signals?”

  Determined to “get him,” I waved my fan energetically on one side, just as I had seen Doña Marisa do countless times with her admirers when Don Rafael came near them.

  Antonio made an abrupt right-face to bow to Emmerence—she, who kept to herself when I was accompanied by my dueña. I heard him compliment her.

  “Señorita, blessed be the mother who bore you.”

  “Good evening,” she muttered in a tone politely distant.

  He side-glanced at me, waiting for my next signal.

  “Oh, figs and fritters!” I hit my palm, with the cursed fan.

  “Stupid girl.” Felipa snatched the fan from me. “You have just told him to leave you alone.”

  “What?” Embarrassed by it, I colored a deep shade of red.

  “If you wish him to speak with you, then open your fan and cover your chin.” She returned the fan to me.

  I did as I was told, and it worked. Antonio bowed his greeting to me, albeit warily.

  “Sofía, I lay myself at your feet.”

  “I kiss your hand, sir.”

  The guitarists began to play up, on a signal given for the next dance.

  “Will you try a fandango with me?”

  “Oh yes”—I bounced on my toes—“with much pleasure.”

  Soon we swayed close to one another, he with careless grace, I with youthful grace. We wheeled about, our bodies convulsing, slowly at first, then lively, in an exchange of allurements, retreats and approaches—he pursuing me, I slipping away, he pursuing me again, I surrendering—the time beat by the snaps of our castanets and the striking of our heels and toes on the ground.

  Ta-ria-ria-pi, ta-ria-ria-pi, sang out our castanets!

  Copying my partner’s every thrilling look, his every voluptuous turn, I became the passionate dancer of my dreams—the one who could dazzle and capture the heart of every male onlooker. My mind in a trance, I don’t recall how I finished the spritely dance or what Antonio murmured to me at the end, with our lips inches apart and our breaths commingling, our arms raised in a poetical gesture. Nor did I give heed to the three señoras’ scornful laughter, or Emmerence’s look of alarm at my daring fandango.

  Don Pepe, in his stentorian voice, proclaimed me la Luciente, the brilliant, whose beauty was illumined by the moonbeams. Enraged, Doña Marisa cast a stormy glance at Felipa. In an instant, my dueña swept me away, back to the prison of my room to be hidden from view. “Tut, tut,” Felipa scolded me, fanning my inflamed cheeks. She made me drink down a glass of iced water with a sugar-sponge in it, certain that I would overheat myself because of Antonio.

  So ended my third flirtation with this majo and not too soon.

  2. Exile

  On Friday arrived, from the countryside, Don Rafael’s creaking black carriage pulled by four raw-boned mules. He had returned to reclaim his throne. Here, one must submit to, obey and never question the tyrannical master of the house, which, in my case, was Don Rafael the Cruel. But blind obedience went against my nature. Not surprisingly, then, I had many an argument with my stepfather, whose mood changed as often as the moon. I considered him a bully with a very long name, Don Rafael de la Riva y de León, as if that somehow compensated for his shortcomings.

  The story goes that even his own father, dead these thirteen years past, had disliked him. To spite his father, Don Rafael married my mother, the Portuguese bolero dancer, instead of Doña Lucía, the nobleman’s daughter. When Don Rafael succeeded to the title, the universe played a cruel joke on him by making him fall in love with Doña Lucía after all. He blamed my mother for his misfortune.

  “You’re the love-child of a lowly foot-soldier—one of those convicts and the scum of the earth.” He baited me often this way.

  “My father is a war hero who saved Portugal from Napoleon.”

  He laughed at it. “You’re a true Andaluza, always boasting and exaggerating,” and he ordered Javier to tug at my gown, it being a joke to pull a man’s coat when he stretched the truth.

  I pushed Javier away.

  Don Rafael went on, “Your real father isn’t the son of a nobleman. So don’t give yourself airs.”

  “Liar!” I believed him ridiculous. Hot angry tears filled my eyes, nevertheless, because no child wants to be told that her father isn’t her own.

  “Oh, I speak the truth,” said he in a lofty manner.

  I retorted that Javier, with his golden curls and blue eyes, couldn’t possibly be Don Rafael’s, and so, my stepfather shouldn’t give himself airs thinking he could fool everyone. Bewildered by this piece of news, Javier began to cry. He had been told that he was Don Rafael’s son and heir. He had no memory of his natural father.

  “Impudent girl!” Don Rafael thundered.

  “Oh, I speak the truth,” said I.

  Don Rafael raged like ten thousand bulls, and when I refused to say that I had lied, he banished me to the prison of my room, on a diet of bread and water for five days. I didn’t see why should I apologize when I knew the secret truth about my brother, that he was my Uncle Scapeton’s love-child.

  It was mid-May. Don Rafael and Javier—the doting father and his beloved son—paraded into the patio one afternoon, accompanied by a poor distant relation, a prodigiously fat and dumpy man named Pinto Morales, who was married to my dueña. Pinto-Pinto is what everyone called him, because he constantly repeated himself. With Pinto, the hanger-on, living amongst us again, Don Rafael became doubly insufferable, boasting about his big wins at the gaming tables, never mind that his monstrous losses far exceeded those wins.

  Sunday evening, the three of them went to the Plaza de Toros. Afterwards, they played bullfight in our patio, my brother straddled across Don Rafael’s back, urging his father forward while he jabbed Pinto with a stick. How noisy and fierce they were! Pinto, the bull, rushed at Javier, who played the picador—a horseman wielding a lance in a bullfight.

  “Olé!” cheered Doña Marisa.

  “Mamá, watch me.” Javier gave Pinto a violent rap.

  She applauded her golden boy. “Bravo!”

  I dared to yawn into my hand—heigh-ho. My red beads flashed hot to warn me that I was in trouble.

  Don Rafael raised his chin and puffed out his chest. If there was one thing he hated, it was having to look up at me, now that I stood tall at five feet five inches—height being an attribute I had inherited from my English father. Because of that, I towered over Spanish women and, as fate would have it, my diminutive stepfather, a shrimp of a man not even five feet high.

  He blustered out, “You think you’re bigger than me and therefore smarter than me.”

  “I am bigger than you, Don Rafael.”

  Olé! They say you shouldn’t kick a mad bull but, truly, I could not help myself. Before I knew it, Don Rafael charged at me, and he seized me by my hair.

  “Aieeee!” My eyes nearly popped out of my head.

  A lover of fights, Doña Marisa the Tigress lunged at my attacker, clawing at his back, while Javier desperately tugged at her waist, begging everyone to stop quarreling. It was no use. Don Rafael refused t
o let go of me, and Doña Marisa of him, and Javier of her. Round and round we went, a tangle of arms and legs and pulled hair.

  “Apologize!” shouted Don Rafael.

  “Never!” cried I.

  Why must I grovel when he behaved like a dragon? If only my father could have seen how absurd my life had become, battling against a reptile with hot stinking cigar-breath, he most certainly would have fetched me home to England if he were able.

  “Don Rafael, I beg your pardon, your pardon.” Pinto cowered and shrank behind a column. “The señor David Beauchamp has arrived.”

  Everyone looked towards the gated entrance where Mr. Beauchamp, an English merchant with a portly girth, stood waiting, not a little amused at our family fracas. Don Rafael shoved me aside. In an instant, he forgot about me and our argument, at least for now. He would save his anger towards me for later when it suited him.

  “Pinto-Pinto, why did you not tell me?”

  “But I did, I did.”

  Don Rafael drew open the glass-paned double doors of his study where a bull’s head with its ears cut off had been mounted as a trophy. Standing before a gilded mirror, he smoothed his pomaded moustache. Next, he sat on a horsehair chair behind his throne, an enormous desk of carved mahogany with a carefully-positioned pair of shoes to peep out from underneath, to make it seem as if his feet touched the ground.

  As I observed him school his features, it always amazed me that he could be all fire and wrath one minute, good-humored the next. I was thinking this, about how everyone could see through his duplicity, when Felipa gripped my arm to take me away. She made me kneel in our small chapel, in the dim light of a candil, a primitive kind of oil lamp, to beg God’s forgiveness for my insolence. She cared not if I perished in the stifling heat and gloom. Fortunately, my brother secretly fetched me a glass of cool water.

  “Ah, Javier of my soul.” I began to drink it down.

  “You must forgive my papá.”

  I sputtered out, “What! I shan’t forgive him for his beastly behavior.”

  He pouted. “Will you make him sick then with a potion?”