Only Sofia-Elisabete

by Robin Kobayashi

  I hear you cry, “Why on earth did you mix with Mrs. Beauchamp and her bigoted circle of friends?” Simply put, I hungered for news of the world, given that the authorities heavily censored the Spanish newspapers. Here, at the Beauchamp’s, I learned about the constitutionalists in Spain and Portugal, and of those interesting tit-bits gleaned from Mr. Beauchamp’s collection of English and foreign newspapers that he, with the aid of a friend in Cádiz, smuggled upriver by steam-boat.

  Mr. Beauchamp fancied himself a contrabandista—one of those romantic characters in a Spanish tale. The smugglers here are the heroes amongst their people—the padres who wished for tea and news, the señoritas who wished for ribbons and lace, the majos who wished for cigars, the daring harp-plucker who wished for novels and ladies’ magazines. Emmerence, however, disdained the Beauchamps, and she disapproved of the newspapers and radical pamphlets that Mr. Beauchamp lent to me. But it didn’t stop me from reading them.

  My other purpose here at the Beauchamp’s was to study the ways of the English and their strange habits and customs. As Lord Scapeton pointed out, if I could not bear their acrimony and insults, and learn to hold my tongue, then I would never become a proper young lady fit to be seen in English society.

  Yes, yes. It’s true that I once poured sherry into Mrs. Beauchamp’s orangeade, this after she had called me a stupid heathen girl—I forget why she had flown into a rage about Catholics. And when she requested more orangeade and got drunk and danced a jig with her fellow contrabandistas, singing “Yo! Que soy contrabandista! Yo ho!” and snorting and kicking up her heels like a horse, she blamed me for her indiscretions. But that happened an age ago. A young lady on the verge of fifteen I was, ready to leave girlhood behind.

  Don Rafael scolded me roundly for performing my controversial composition at the Beauchamp’s. We quarreled again the next day, this time about politics.

  “You pathetic ignoramus!” cried he. “What good can come from a constitutional monarchy?”

  “It guarantees liberty, freedom of the press, the end of the Inquisition—”

  He scoffed at those things. “If you live in my house, you must side with an absolute monarchy and do as I tell you.”

  I despised Don Rafael. He, and every tradition-monger like him, believed in the established hierarchy of their world—the wealthy few on top, the masses of poor on the bottom—and Almighty God clearly intended everyone to remain as they were.

  Later, when everyone was at their siesta, I took to reading a recent issue of Galignani’s Messenger that I had borrowed from Mr. Beauchamp’s library. In it, I learned that more liberals were to be tried by military tribunal, under orders of Ferdinand VII. Made furious by the injustice of the trial, I marched about in the patio, shouting, “Viva la Constitución!” I hadn’t known my stepfather was awake.

  His royalist roar shook the house. “Cállate!”

  “La libertad!” was my defiant cry.

  I refused to shut my mouth. How could I not be anxious about the fate of these liberals? To punish me, Don Rafael demanded that I shout “Viva el rey! Long live the king!” three times, in support of the crown, or he would throw me into a dungeon, though we didn’t have one. When I pointed this out, he swore a tremendous oath and thereafter made me wear a placard that read, “Long live the absolute King. Death to the liberals.” Even worse, he placed upon my head a tall conical hat made of cloth, similar to the coroza worn by the accused before the Inquisition, as part of my penance. It reminded me of a dunce’s cap.

  There is nothing like seclusion and humiliation to turn you into a pitiful bore, filled with bitterness, hurt pride and dark thoughts. Spied on by the servants, I couldn’t simply throw off the placard and coroza. The worst of it was, the long days, still so impossibly hot, passed with no love-letters and nothing else to read, because I had been placed under house arrest by Don Rafael. The ogre burned many of my books and pamphlets—anything he deemed seditious, including the Defensa de las mujeres, which defended women’s right to an education.

  Vexed almost beyond reason, I contemplated jumping off the balcony and into the arms of a handsome knight-errant. I could go to Madrid and become a famous cantatrice there, accompanying myself on the harp. Then I could sing and harp my way to England. Alas, none of that would ever happen. No doubt my unlucky self would jump off the balcony only to crack my brain on the street when my knight failed to catch me.

  It was late May and I remained under house-arrest. One starry night, I felt terribly homesick for England. I moped about in the patio, poking my fingers into the myrtle hedges, plucking the blossoms of the hierba Luisa and snapping the petals from the geraniums. As I shuffled back and forth, crushing the fallen petals under my bare feet, I considered the impossible—my long-overdue return to England.

  My Uncle Scapeton’s words came back to trouble me: “Her father’s health can never be fully restored.” Yet his lordship still refused to say anything more about it and what had happened.

  But I willed the truth to come to me then in a dream. My father, an advocate of Catholic Emancipation, which would end discrimination against people of our faith in Great Britain, had been attacked by some bigots. “Catholics are enemies to the Church of England!” these ruffians declared, and they pelted my father with stale crusts, thinking it a good prank to crust him. My father, blinded by flying crusts, ran straight into a lamp post. His tormentors laughed while they dumped a sack of flour on his head.

  I was weeping for my poor father, when a low soft hist startled me to my senses. Confused, I looked about me. Had I imagined it? No, the hist came again from behind the locked gate. They say that darkness is the thief’s cloak, but surely, a thief wouldn’t signal to me twice. Just then, the Giralda Tower sounded the midnight chimes, the finest hour of the night in every love story I had read.

  “Sofía,” came a familiar low whisper from a cloaked man. A slouched wide-brimmed hat hid his face.

  The red beads on my neck burned with intensity.

  “Antonio?” I padded towards him.

  We exchanged the usual and customary ancient greetings.

  “I lay myself at your feet.” He bowed to me.

  “I kiss your hand,” came my soft reply.

  “Doña Marisa told me about the trouble you’re in. You poor girl.”

  “I’m a prisoner here. I can’t even attend Mass.”

  “Unlock the gate and come along with me.”

  A voice in my head urged caution. “I must not.”

  “But I wish to know you, mi amada secreta.”

  I, Sofia-Elisabete, was his secret love? He reached his hand through the grated gate, to brush his fingers on my cheek, on my lips and chin. I closed my eyes. Part of me longed to disappear, to fly northeast over the Pyrenees, swift as a swallow—all blue and rust and white feathers—back to the warm nest that awaited me in Scarborough, while another part of me wanted to be saved by Antonio, who would release me from my captivity. Had he sensed my despair?

  “Let us dance away together,” he whispered urgently.

  A faint footstep within alarmed us. We hastily said good-bye.

  Don Rafael rushed into the patio, and he held his lanthorn up high.

  “You wicked, wicked girl, speaking alone with a man!”

  I would catch it now. Meanwhile, Antonio sidled away into the darkness, leaving me to face my angry stepfather on my own.

  “A robber?” cried Don Rafael. “You spoke with a robber?”

  “Upon my soul, I did no such thing.”

  He stormed at me, shaking his fist. “You will take the veil now.”

  At that moment, Doña Marisa the Tigress stalked into view. She leapt between us. If not for her intervention, I shuddered to think how Don Rafael would have punished me this time—dragging me by my hair to a convent, and chaining me to the iron grate. The morning next, I was whisked off to Cádiz where my grandfather lives.

  3. Impossible

  Don Luis de Luna, the natural father of Doña Marisa, i
s my grandfather, my abuelito, whom I’ve nicknamed Tito. Because of Don Luis, my mother says we are of Spanish blood, even though he isn’t really Spanish, but Genoese, which matters not a whit to her. An age ago in the Republic of Genoa, he called himself Luigi di Luna, and when he sought his fortune in Cádiz, he became Luis de Luna. Hard work and wits became his mercantile creed. Along with other highly prosperous Genoese traders, he became naturalized, paying for his noble status of hidalgo.

  Tito, the proudest of Gaditanos, which is what they call the inhabitants here, considers the peninsula of Cádiz a tiny country of its own, his grand house a palace and me his little princess. Still handsome, even with his shiny bald head, he has dark eyes, a sharp long nose and a salt-and-pepper beard. He prides himself on being a true hidalgo, one with a stout heart, self-respect and pundonor (or point of honor) but not so preposterously as to be blinded by this thing called manly honor. Formidable he is. A hothead with a knife he is not. I think him clever with many an eccentric impulse.

  Felipa, holding a small taper, shook me awake. “Get up and dress, you naughty girl! It’s three o’clock in the morning.”

  I rubbed my sleepy eyes. “What’s the matter?”

  “Matter! You encouraged a robber to pluck the hen-turkey—flirt, flirt, flirt with you—and to steal your pomegranate—”

  “Oh, botheration, my forbidden fruits are safe.”

  “—and now, you are being sent to Cádiz, and so am I, and so are Pinto-Pinto and Emeraaanza because of you.” As always, she pronounced Emeranza with the third syllable stretched out as though she were in aaagony.

  Truly, I was the one in agony, for I would be separated from Antonio. How cruel, how unfair my life was.

  “I’m not going!” and I threw my pillow at her.

  She slapped it away. “We must hurry or we shall miss the wretched steam-boat.”

  Felipa never liked the steam-boat, the puffing monster which she decried as sorcery. She fussed about the luggage, ordering the servant to pack my clothes and wrap my shoes. While that happened, I huffed off to speak with Doña Marisa. She apparently cared not about losing me to my grandfather, even though it meant missing my fifteenth birthday—the day she said I would become a full-grown woman. She had promised to take me for the first time to the Alcázar, the royal palace.

  “What about my birthday?”

  “Foolish girl, do you wish to be locked up in a convent for the rest of your life?”

  Crossing my arms, I muttered out, “No.”

  “You should be grateful to visit your grandfather earlier this year. I thought you loved him.”

  At the mention of love, I began to cry. She impatiently dabbed my tears away.

  “Why must you blubber like a baby? I promise that one evening I’ll take you for a stroll and then we’ll go to the opera and afterwards you can sit up for supper and sip sherry.”

  I gave a loud sniffle. “When?”

  “When I say when. Now, away with you, before your stepfather awakens.”

  In my mind, I accused her of wishing me gone so that she could steal away Antonio.

  When my companions and I drove off, Doña Marisa bestowed upon us the ancient benediction, “Vayan con Dios, y que no haya novedad”—“Go with God, and may nothing new happen,” along with, “Pinto-Pinto, may you arrive with sound ribs.” Amused, she hid her mirth behind her fan, because whenever Pinto and Felipa, the unlucky pair, escorted me to Cádiz, something new in the unfortunate sense always happened.

  The Betis sat upon the water near the Torre del Oro, the Moorish tower. We boarded the steam-boat in the darkness, for the sleepy moon lay hidden in its bed of clouds and only a few wandering stars shimmered in the black sky. Felipa kissed her cross made of laurel stalk, to protect her on this journey. Very soon, the steam-boat bells clanged, and away we went, thundering down the river, the steam puffing, the engines creaking, the paddle-wheels plashing. “Madre de Dios!”—a thousand groans and curses reverberated from street to street as the noisy steam-boat awakened the city-folk.

  There is nothing more tedious than a voyage of twenty leagues on the Guadalquivir accompanied by Felipa, whose ill humor rose along with the temperature each day. No other woman in Andalucía could match her grumpish moods. When day broke, she complained about the heat and the monotony. She complained about the dreary plains that stretched off in the distance. She complained about the idle cattle lying in the water to cool themselves. “If I see one more stupid cow river-bathing, I’m going to hurl it to the moon,” she muttered, holding a lemon to her nose, because she always suffered from the seasickness, though we were nowhere near the sea.

  It wasn’t until mid-afternoon that we reached Sanlúcar, situated near the mouth of the river, now a murky swirl of umber. Felipa groaned. She dreaded the bad road ahead and being shook to a jelly. “My body will ache for days,” she whined out. Pinto shut his ears to her complaints, and he hired two calesas, each of these gaudily-painted two-wheeled carriages pulled by a mule.

  “You must travel with a guarded escort,” the innkeeper told us. “The four leagues to Port St. Mary are peopled with robbers, and the road has terrible ruts.”

  A confident Pinto waved him off. “The bandits will not harm us.”

  “May you arrive with sound ribs,” the innkeeper replied, shaking his head.

  As usual, Pinto ignored the innkeeper’s warnings. As usual, when we reached the post-house two leagues distant, Pinto inquired about bandits. As usual, when we recommenced our journey, crossing the sandy plain covered with furze and aloe and prickly pear, a gang of bandits came riding hard after us, waving their pistols. Our drivers, who sat on the shaft of their calesas, held up their hands.

  “Boca a tierra!” The bandits ordered Pinto to put his mouth to the ground.

  “I beg of you”—Pinto whimpered—“don’t kill me, don’t kill me!”

  Two of the bandits took turns kicking his rotund backside. They hurled insults about his mother and laughed at how fat he was. Emmerence gripped my hand. We prayed together that Pinto wouldn’t be beaten, or worse.

  “Give me your money!” demanded the bandit chief, a sinister-looking man with one front tooth.

  “Take it, take it,” cried Pinto, delivering up a purse of coins.

  The bandit chief nodded to his men. And so, the bandits let us alone, and Pinto’s ribs were safe from a beating. Felipa cursed the bandits who put their horses to a gallop.

  “May those thieves be changed to lizards and may scorpions rip them apart and devour them!”

  “O Dios, Dios.” Pinto pulled his hair. “Don Rafael will cut me into a million pieces, but what can I do? The money he gave me is gone, is gone.”

  “Gone,” she echoed his echoes.

  “Gone.”

  “María santísima!” She wrung her hands.

  “María santísima!”

  Sick of him and everything, she rapped him on the head with her closed fan.

  Pinto, being a sluggard and dim-witted, proved an easy victim for a bandit, and I commiserated with him about our bad luck. Don Rafael’s money was gone, gone, gone, never to be recovered.

  Emmerence looked forward to a happy stay in Cádiz. Whereas my mind was in a complete muddle. How, on the one hand, I longed to see Tito. How, on the other, I longed for Antonio. The closer we got to Cádiz, the more my feelings clashed, but then, the next day, the city rose before us, like an island of ivory coral, and it worked its spell on me. The clean streets, the friendly people, the fishing-smacks, the sharp scent of the sea—they always reminded me of Scarborough and my childhood’s home and all that is good there.

  Cádiz, that masterpiece of azure skies, deep blue waters and dazzling white houses with green shutters, had become my second home, a refuge in fact, where I could breathe easy and be the real me, thoughtful and kind, and not contrary and insolent. If it hadn’t been for my beloved Tito, I’m certain I would have escaped to England on my own by stowing away on a merchantman.

  There are man
y architectural gems surrounding the Plaza de San Antonio but none more brilliant than my Tito’s abode—a proud white-stone house four stories high, surmounted by a cupolaed watch-tower and, at the entrance, a mahogany door studded with knobs of brass. Shuttered windows with balconies rise above, with consecrated palm leaves woven between the balcony railings to preserve against the evil eye. Tito claimed that he won the house after playing forty-eight hours of primero with a nobleman, who, without a scintilla of emotion, gambled it away. But I never quite believed his tale.

  The main entrance being wide open during the day, we proceeded down a hall to ring the bell. The inner door silently swung open to admit us. As a child, I used to think it magic, until I discovered that a servant, standing on the floor above, raised the latch by pulling a string.

  Inside, a mysterious scent of dried limes—the scent of Zia Gómez, my Tito’s curandera, a healer—perfumed the air. Smoky and pungent, it wafted to a quadrangular patio opened to the heavens. Zia puttered about there, feeding leaves to her singing grasshoppers in their brass-wire cage. How striking she was, this dark-eyed enchantress with dark-olive skin and many gold bracelets and rings adorning her beautiful person. She advanced with a welcoming gesture, twirling two fingers as was her habit.

  “Dulce niña mía—my sweet girl.” She embraced me with her clinking bracelets. “You have returned so soon, to steal my potion formulas—you, with your strange note-book written in code?”

  “Oh, Zia, you have found me out.” I grinned at her. “Where is my dear Tito?”

  “Don Luis is working on something in his laboratory—”

  A loud thud greeted us.

  “—but you mustn’t bother him. Never go into his laboratory. He will join you later on the roof-top, to take the air.”

  “The roof-top—may I go up there now?”

  “His home is your home.”