Only Sofia-Elisabete

by Robin Kobayashi

  I sat there in pretended guilt, my lips twisted to the side.

  “Suu-suu! You promised not to hurt my papá.”

  “Yes, yes—I will only curse him with a bad run of cards.” An easy curse, to be sure, because Don Rafael always lost at cards, no matter what, making me seem all-powerful in Javier’s eyes.

  Satisfied with my promise—one I had a thousand times made—Javier handed me something. He had seen Antonio at the bullfight.

  I gasped in surprise. “A love-letter?” It surely was.

  He mimicked me, with a silly love-struck face, and then he dashed off.

  In the shadowy light, I deciphered the letter-writer’s fanciful hand, “En tanto que de rosa y de azucena”—an ancient sonnet. Why did the letter-writer transcribe a poem about a woman’s fading beauty, the blushing rose and lily-white of her countenance withering in the icy blasts? I was not yet fifteen! A chorus of crone-like voices from somewhere taunted me nevertheless, “You’re soon ripe, soon rotten.”

  Outside, the sound of footfalls approached. It was Don Rafael and his guest. They strolled along through the corridor, laughing and joking as though they were great friends. They made plans to go to the casino to play monte and pecado and, on the following Sunday, the bullfight. To be sure, this astounded me. A superarrogant nobleman like Don Rafael never mixed with los medianos—the people in trade whom he despised.

  By and by, Don Rafael announced that he would escort Emmerence and me to the Beauchamp’s house, and I wondered how that could be, given our recent violent argument. My one adventure every now and then was to take tea with the Beauchamps, they being “repulsive middling sort of creatures,” according to my Uncle Scapeton, who, having met them in Cádiz, arranged these diversions for me. Apparently, though, Don Rafael wished to talk business with Mr. Beauchamp. I should have known better than to expect any real kindness from my stepfather.

  Mrs. Beauchamp had invited several of her English friends to take tea, and they peppered me with questions about Doña Marisa. No doubt these English gossips wanted to criticize her once I had gone, and so, I had to tell them something, or else they would keep on pestering me. What I did reveal was quite ordinary for an Andaluza, such as she rode astride a horse (“yes, ma’am, the way men do”), she smoked constantly (“yes, ma’am, the way men puff on cigars”) and she frequented the bullfights (“yes, ma’am, she shouts the way men do”).

  The truth was that they believed her a sinner of the worst sort. I made the mistake of mentioning Señor Gonzalez, and oh, how their eyes bulged with moral indignation. Some cortejos serve as true amours, while others do not, and these English women clearly wished to know which kind of gentleman escort he was. But I, the virtuous maiden, could not know of such things, and it would be indelicate of them to ask me their married-women questions.

  “Señor Gonzalez is a devoted escort.”

  I sensed their disbelief on hearing this tit-bit. My mischievous brain contrived a way to provoke them, just for the fun of it.

  “He, being a proficient escort, is writing an anonymous work entitled El Perfecto Cortejo, which will surely create a sensation.”

  This disturbed the women, who whispered amongst themselves that it must be a scandalous book filled with indecent pictures and language and whatnot. I had come across those kinds of books in Mr. Beauchamp’s library. Later, at home, Emmerence chided me for my deception and she suspected that I had been reading salacious materials. She searched my things, without success.

  “You know as well as I that Señor Gonzalez writes in a humorous fashion. You ought not to tease the English women so.”

  “Tease or tempt?” I raised a brow at her. “I wager you that they will purchase—nay, smuggle—the book to read it in secret.”

  “Well … perhaps it might tempt them learn Castilian if they must translate it,” she replied drily.

  These English women seemed easily shocked (or perhaps they enjoyed being shocked). If only they knew I had in my possession a love-letter from Antonio, the magnificent majo. I was nearly found out by my dueña, who had seen me kissing it as I wrote one of my own.

  “Love-letters are scandalous,” Felipa scolded me. “Girls should not be taught to read.”

  “It’s not a love-letter,” I lied.

  “Reading a love-letter is a mortal sin.”

  In church the next morning, I observed a señorita standing before the basin of holy water. She dipped two fingers into it and then slyly held out her fingers so that her sweetheart could touch them. Other señoritas loitered nearby, awaiting their love-letters. Now I was one of them, praying before the Virgin in the wall, the altar faintly lit by a tiny wax taper. A beggar-boy peeped into the vestibule, and nearly pounced on me, stuffing a letter into my hand. “Here, little boy,” I whispered, giving him a cuarto to deliver my letter to Antonio.

  On our return home, we were immediately met with a great deal of noise. The three señoras bustled into the patio, embracing Doña Marisa and chattering all at once, happy that Don Rafael was not at home for the day. They sat with her for several hours, gossiping and smoking a thousand pachillos, and they made me fetch them this and that, as though I were a house-drudge. Oh, botheration, when I could’ve been reading my second love-letter.

  When, at long last, they had gone, we dined on olla podrida, and then cabbages with chorizo, followed by partridges with rice, and then dried cod with eggs, and, lastly, apricots and oranges. Our slow dinner would never end. Finally, we retired to our rooms for the afternoon siesta. Felipa fell asleep near me on our straw mats, snoring as loud as a horse and setting off fireworks like one. Santa Isabel! I fled from the room, my destination being the roof-top.

  Joining me there were the swallows who nested in the upturned eaves of clay tiles. They warbled their pretty love songs while I perused my letter, which, to my happy surprise, the letter-writer had embellished with many a beautiful flourish. Never had I been given anything so passionate, so explicit. I read on, in complete fascination, when I came across a double entendre too indecent to be repeated here but, suffice it to say, it concerned my toes.

  Felipa had once spoken of the parts of my body as a cornucopia of fruits—my breasts being lemons (then oranges, then grapefruits), my backside being melons, my cheeks being apples, my nose being a strawberry, my lips being cherries, my toes being grapes.

  “But which part of me is a forbidden fruit?” I teased her one evening while she washed my feet.

  “Each part of you is a forbidden fruit.”

  “Is that why you won’t let me bathe naked?”

  “Bathing naked is a mortal sin.”

  “Oh, Felipa—”

  “You are a juicy ripe pomegranate,” and she patted my belly, “adorned with melons and grapes and such. You mustn’t let a boy touch any of your forbidden fruits.”

  “Even my grapes?” I wiggled my toes at her.

  “You must stay pure and innocent,” she admonished me, pinching my toes.

  Though Antonio’s reference to my toes unsettled me, I dared myself to read his words a second time. How was it that something could be so pleasing and offensive? I had just finished reading it again, when I felt ashamed, terribly ashamed, of having looked upon those indecent words twice, knowing my father would have disapproved of them.

  “Enjoying your letter?”

  I nearly jumped out of my shoes. “Ah, Emmerence, it is you.”

  She held out her hand. Reluctantly, I surrendered the letter.

  “Your mother encourages your flirtatious conduct, but I say this—that you must put an end to this flirtation before you are ruined,” said she.

  My throat constricted at the thought of being in a ruined state.

  She continued on, “You ought not to encourage this young man, who, at two and twenty, is skilled in the arts of persuasion and flattery.”

  Silent I stood, with my eyes lowered.

  “My dear girl, you are brilliant and headstrong. How has this dandy fooled you—he, who pretend
s to be nobility but whose trade it is to dance and seduce each night?”

  I half-shrugged.

  “He can barely read a word and he doesn’t know how to write,” said she, with intellectual scorn.

  “But … he might be a part of my love story. A gypsy predicted it.”

  She gasped in horror. “The fortune-teller you’ve told me about? The one with the squint eye?”

  “She was tuerta—one-eyed. Don’t you believe her?”

  “Pish, no!”

  Her response disappointed me, that she couldn’t believe in fortune-telling. It saddened me to know Emmerence and I were different in that way and nothing would ever change it.

  The following morning in church, Emmerence insisted that I remain by her side or, better yet, as penance, take a tour on my knees as many Spanish women do. But I objected to shuffling on my knees in church. I knelt instead on the straw mats used by everyone here, be they rich or poor. My hands clasped, I prayed silently in Portuguese—my forbidden language—that, somehow, I would get another love-letter. I even paid a real for a Mass to be said for the most forsaken soul in purgatory, thinking she would gladly help me.

  As we descended the church steps to return home, the wretched beggars with their pretended ailments—one on crutches, one struck dumb, one with a big sore that shifted about on his face from day to day—raised their hands and voices, bestowing all sorts of benedictions that would bring them money.

  “May God grant you long life.”

  “May God grant you dream luckily.”

  “May God grant you a life free of sorrow.”

  Quicker than a cannon-ball, a ragged urchin shot out of the church, to toss me a love-letter as he ran past me down the steps. “What, in heaven’s name, did he give you?” asked Emmerence. And so, there was nothing for it but to give her the letter, the love-letter intended for me. We walked in silence.

  “You are cross about it,” said she.

  “I want to read my letter.”

  She sighed. “If your father were here, he would—”

  “But he is not! He has forgotten me.”

  “Now, now, patience and fortitude.”

  I shut my ears. “He doesn’t want me anymore, because I’m his love-child.”

  “Of course, he wants you.”

  “Doña Marisa says he has deserted me.” I tugged at my hair—a nervous habit of mine.

  “How can you take such a ludicrous notion into your head? You know that your father is ill.”

  “I am an exile—don’t you see? My Uncle Scapeton, who finds me and my Catholicism a great inconvenience, persuaded everyone to hide me here in Spain.”

  “Really, Sofia, you mustn’t give way to impossible nonsense.”

  Sulky Girl I remained, nevertheless, scarcely responding to Emmerence in Latin when I received my morning lessons. This pleased my dueña to see that we young ladies were at odds with one another. Felipa could never understand my desire to educate myself, to babble in strange foreign tongues, when, according to her, the only thing I needed to know was how to get a man, get married and get myself with child.

  Wholly convinced that I wouldn’t survive one more day without Antonio, I became ever so fidgety confined here in our home. Then, an invitation arrived by messenger. La libertad! Taking tea with Mrs. Beauchamp meant temporary freedom, and I could leave this place, albeit with my jailer, Emmerence. In my desperate state to speak with anyone besides the inmates of my own home, I became quite willing to be with people whom I didn’t like. To be happy to see someone who made you unhappy—what a tangled-up notion that was.

  Mrs. Beauchamp’s great wish was that I entertain her friends. Like the bard who sings for his dinner, I performed for tea. Spanish girls strum the guitar, but I, Sofia-Elisabete, plucked the harp, thinking it would appease my father, who had always insisted that I give up my drum. He never did approve of my being a drummer-girl. Even so, he had indulged me, the musical child prodigy of Scarborough, so that I could parade about our garden, beating drum signals and driving everyone to distraction.

  To become a young lady, I needed to play a respectable musical instrument, one that didn’t give people the headache. Because of that, Lord Scapeton had arranged for Monsieur Labarre, an eminent French harper, to give me lessons for the past three years. What a droll Frenchman. If I forgot to tune the harp beforehand, he cackled out threats in French, and he raised high his ebony ruler, the blow landing near me but never on me. Still, it made me jump, which pleased him.

  Oh! And those times when I struck the wrong note, or failed to position my fingers quick enough, or made a sharp instead of a flat with a pedal, he would dandy out, “Mon Dieu-u-u!” A thousand mon Dieu’s later, he declared me “tolerably proficient with a hint of promise” for having not slaughtered one of Bochsa’s insipid fantasias, and he returned to Paris post-haste while I composed moody concertos on my own. Soon, my independent turn of mind exhibited itself, with new and dramatic effects of harp playing sure to scandalize the harp-plucking world.

  I say, Monsieur Labarre! You would have been amazed that I spent thirty minutes tuning my poor harp, which had been conveyed to the Beauchamp’s by an old rickety cart. There, in the sitting room, in front of her gossipy friends, Mrs. Beauchamp proclaimed me an exceptional pupil of a French music master. She and the other women, including Emmerence, drew back in shock, however, when I untied my basquiña to reveal my maja costume (one of my mother’s cast-offs)—a tight red bodice laced with ribbons in front, a short petticoat trimmed with two rows of ribbon and lace.

  Having kissed my red beads for luck, something I always did before I performed, I positioned myself at the harp, my feet in pointed shoes working the pedals, my fingers plucking the strings in glorious arpeggios, to perform my latest, most spectacular composition.

  “How bizarre,” muttered Mrs. Stallings, the mistress of an English boarding house and a particular favorite of our hostess. “I’ve never heard anyone play the harp so energetically, so violently.”

  I responded by tapping the rhythm on the wooden sound-board with my left hand while my right hand plucked the melody.

  Another woman chimed in. “Her technique is irregular—nay, lawless. It’s as if she were beating a drum.”

  I knocked louder on the sound-board.

  Mrs. Beauchamp told them, “To be sure, this is a result of the savage character of the Spanish, they being of mixed blood, though they deny it.”

  “Do you refer to the (gasp) Morisco blood?”

  “Oh, aye. Can you not see the Moorish color in her cheeks? I’ve heard Señorita Belles mention that she played a Moorish drum—a square drum with seeds inside!—when she was three years old.”

  “How shocking.”

  “She has Portuguese blood as well. Everyone knows she is the natural daughter of Maria Isabel Soares Belles, who styles herself Doña Marisa even though she doesn’t have a drop of noble blood in her. As the Spanish proverb goes, ‘Strip a Spaniard of his virtues, and you make a Portuguese of him.’”

  The women tittered together. They had no sooner laughed at me and my origins when, due to a sudden shriek I made on a harp string, they jumped in their chairs, upsetting their tea cups. Abruptly, I slid my palm over the strings, followed by a strong finger slide, a glissando, with my other hand, ascending then descending, ascending then descending, like wind and thunder, wind and thunder. Once the tempest in my heart had subsided, I concluded with a rainbow of sweet-sounding harmonics to soothe the women’s shattered nerves.

  Mrs. Beauchamp cast me a look of disdain. “Señorita Belles, what is the name of this churlish composition?”

  I mustered up an innocent countenance. “I have called this one ‘The Monstrous Rock of Gibraltar.’”

  “Tut, tut. You must learn restraint when you play this noble instrument.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I will endeavor to play gentler next time—”

  “Aye, do.”

  “—when I perform a composition that I’ve dedicated
to you.”

  This pleased Mrs. Beauchamp. “And what is the name of this happy composition?”

  “‘The Wild and Bucking Andalucian.’”

  “Good heavens! Would not something such as ‘The Staid English Lady’ be more appropriate?”

  I lowered my eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Emmerence and I took our leave of them. While we stood in the passageway, where Emmerence tied my basquiña, we overheard one of the women, a Mrs. Wilkinson, the wife of a painter, commend Mrs. Beauchamp for acting as patroness and for teaching me, a barbarian, how to curtsey in the English way, since Spanish women do not curtsey, nor do they stand when greeting guests, or accept a man’s arm, or even give him their hand.

  “The poor girl starves for culture, civility and proper guidance.” Mrs. Beauchamp affected a loud sigh. “She once threw a punch at a boy—the young son of the English ambassador here.”

  “Oh, for shame!” “Heavens!” “Wanton girl!” The women all spoke at once.

  I wrinkled my brow. That savage boy, a Protestant, had called me a heathen for being Catholic, and he thumped me on the head. This hit of his I answered with a punch on the arm. What a vengeful boy he was, telling his father what I had done. Why is it that a boy who inflicts a blow is deemed brave and high-spirited, whereas a girl is ill-bred and vindictive?

  Mrs. Beauchamp added, “I have promised Lord Scapeton to do my best with her. He is very fond of the girl, you know.”

  “Did you say Lord Scapeton?”

  “Indeed,” boasted Mrs. Beauchamp, all show-off about her connection to his lordship.

  “The girl must be his love-child.”

  “I am quite sure that she is,” answered Mrs. Beauchamp.

  Emmerence and I exchanged a look of alarm. Lord Scapeton would be seriously displeased to hear this.

  “Well! I grant you she speaks proper English for someone who is the daughter of Doña Marisa,” said the painter’s wife.

  A sour-faced matron, aptly named Mrs. Lemmon, shrilled out, “Mrs. Beauchamp certainly deserves praise for improving this heathen Catholic girl, but I do not approve of the girl’s short petticoat. Such indelicacy! And I dare say she’s not wearing stays.”