His Only Son: With Dona Berta

by Leopoldo Alas

  On the advice of Mochi, who was hoping to flatter the religious sentiments of the audience, Serafina sang a prayer to the Virgin written by an Italian composer. As soon as the audience realized that it had something to do with God, they stopped whispering and fidgeting in their seats and sat as quietly as they could, listening in silence, as if wanting it to be known that they understood not only the sublime nature of the dogmatic mysteries but also the mysterious relationship between music and the celestial. Serafina—who, some weeks ago, would have given anything to be invited to beg for the poor at the door of the church—was making the most of this opportunity to prove her out-and-out Catholicism, thus scotching any rumors that she was a Protestant. And she did look very beautiful with her demure, pious demeanor, her pure, broad, slightly convex brow . . . and yet, at the same time, as well as piety, there was something sweet and familiar about her expression; her fair, wavy hair, providing a vaporous frame to the gentle curve of her pure, white brow, seemed symbolic of an idealism lost in poetic dreams.

  As soon as Bonifacio heard Serafina’s voice rise up in the silence of the room, he went and stood at the door farthest away in order to listen from there, and he did so without thinking, without even trying or wanting to stop himself, as if drawn by a magnet. The Italian prayer was neither very remarkable nor very original, but being slow, gentle, uncomplicated, and full of feeling and genuine, evocative pathos, it was perfect for an audience of amateurs. “Ah, yes,” thought Bonifacio, “the peace of the soul also has its poetry. If only I had that peace, ah, yes, if only!” For such peace was like that song: sweet, calm, serious, and strong in its own way, but also measured and gentle, a friend to the contented conscience, in love with love but safely within the orderly limits of life; just as the seasons follow, unprotesting, one on the other, the way night follows day, the way everything in the world obeys that law, without ever losing its charm or vigor; to love and love always, while God invisible smiles down on us from above the canopy of the heavens, from among the shifting clouds and twinkling stars. “My Serafina, my wife in spirit, my mother’s memory in voice, why does your singing, while never mentioning either of those things, speak to me of the tranquil, ordered home I do not have, of the cradle I do not have, at whose feet I do not sit and watch, of a lost maternal lap, of a vanished childhood? That voice is the only family I have in this world!” It was strange, but while he was thinking this, Bonifacio suddenly understood Serafina’s religious song as being about the mystery of the Annunciation: “And the Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary.” How ridiculous! Surely Bonifacio did not think that song was announcing to him, like some extraordinary prophecy, that he was about to become a . . . mother, yes, a mother, not a father! The truth is that something stirred inside him, and that feeling of ideal love, pure, gentle, and peaceful, became an almost physical sensation that spread down through his body to his stomach. “This,” he thought, “must be what people call the sympathetic nervous system, and I find it very sympathetic indeed! What strange delight! Like the delights of conception. This music, that voice, are making me almost mad!” Yes, these were mad thoughts, but how that music filled the soul, more than love itself, and with another sort of love, a new love, less selfish or entirely unselfish . . . oh, he had no words to explain it. He had to rest his head on the cold wood of the doorframe and turn his face toward the study because his eyes were growing dark and full of tears, and he did not want anyone to see him weeping. “It would be a fine thing,” he thought as he began to calm down, “if Emma, for example, were to ask, ‘What are you crying about, you fool?’ Well, I’m crying out of love, new love; because the voice of that woman, of my beloved, is telling me that I am going to be a kind of virgin mother, I mean, father . . . no, mother; that I am going to have a child, legitimate of course, because although she will give birth to him, in the material sense, he will be mine alone.” For he did not think that the child would belong to his beloved, not at all—and he hoped Serafina would forgive him—no, it would be his wife’s child, yes, his wife’s, but without the impurity of Emma’s womb besmirching the unborn child, who would be all his, his tribe’s, his family’s . . . a child born to him and to that voice, even though, in the eyes of the world, Emma would have given birth to him, as befitted the proper order of things. Bonifacio was afraid he might grow ill from thinking such nonsense, especially since his legs were beginning to give way beneath him, always the first symptom that he was about to faint. The music stopped, the voice fell silent, applause broke out, and Bonifacio suddenly changed thoughts, sensations, and feelings. He returned to reality and found himself being led by Mochi through the room and over to the piano.

  Körner had sprung to his feet to applaud, hands pounding like the hammers in a fulling mill; Marta joined him, to the great amazement of the local ladies, who thought it was the privilege of their sex not to respond to art, and who would all have deemed it unworthy of any modest lady to applaud a singer; just as they would have thought it an abdication of one’s duty as a woman to stand up during a visit either to greet a gentleman or to bid him goodbye. Then Emma began applauding too, and Serafina was quick to notice those two ladies sitting so close to the stage and who, exceptionally, had joined in the applause offered her by the stronger sex. Marta and Körner considered the Englishwoman, a fellow foreigner, as almost a compatriot; and, since she was also an artist, they considered her far worthier of respect and praise than the affected ladies of the town, for all their pretensions and secular interests. Körner went over to the piano and spoke to Serafina in English; and it was then that Mochi and Bonifacio reached the stage arm in arm and, thanks to the natural expansiveness of Minghetti, who immediately joined in the conversation, and to Mochi’s words of gratitude to Bonifacio and his friends, and Körner’s polyglot skills, they were all soon speaking enthusiastically together, mixing English, German, Italian, and Spanish. Marta shook the singer’s hand, and Serafina, with a boldness and courtesy that astonished Bonifacio, effusively clasped Emma’s limp fingers. Seeing the hands of his wife and his lover thus joined, Bonifacio thought again of the Devil’s miracles and into his mind burst that line from Horace, “Let serpents couple with birds, and lambs with tigers,” which he had often come across in the newspapers and in the occasional speech. His wife was clearly the tiger. And she looked radiant. She had been born for just such emotions and events. She felt a rush of pride to find herself among those people, being greeted by such a beautiful, elegant woman and with such a show of respect and deference. Serafina dazzled her. Emma had sometimes thought that there were women, although not many, who had a certain je ne sais quoi that made her envy the men who could fall in love with them; such women were not like most other women, however pretty, for she could not understand what men saw in them at all. Serafina was much taller than Emma, and Emma felt emanating from her a kind of manly aura that she found quite simply enchanting; besides, being able to see up close what was made for others to see and admire from afar, flattered her pride and satisfied a strange curiosity; it flattered her still more to think that those smiles, those looks, those words, which were ordinarily available to all and sundry, were now being bestowed on her alone. Possibly even more seductive was the fact that Serafina led an “irregular” life, was a fallen woman . . . irretrievably fallen. The sinful curiosity with which Emma had always regarded the vulgar ladies of easy virtue, whom others pointed out to her in the street, was somehow multiplied and ennobled; and Emma, by dint of smelling, touching, looking, and listening, hoped to find out more about the intimate history of that wanton artist’s pleasures and adventures. She suddenly saw, almost as palpable images, any ideas of order and banal domestic morality being plunged into a sad, pale, harsh region of the mind, overshadowed, cornered, humbled; they seemed to her ridiculous, like the poor, antiquated clothes of a village dame; they were like ill-made dresses in faded colors; she herself had worn those clothes and now she felt a retrospective shame; yes, she, for all her desire to be original, shared those same
foolish anxieties and was steeped in the domestic morality of those ladies who refused to applaud the singers and who tended not to have lovers. It occurred to her to think of Serafina as a great captain, a leader of moral Amazons, bold and audacious, at whose side she would march as a bugler or standard-bearer, faithful to the flag. When she noticed that the local ladies were watching in amazement, almost horror, as she and Marta engaged in close conversation with the singers, her pleasure only redoubled. How wonderful it was to be there among the town’s upper crust and to be seen to be doing something so scandalous, utterly new, unheard-of, amazing, and subversive!

  Marta initially affected a certain inner superiority, but, quite against her will, she felt equally delighted and proud to be there talking to Serafina; indeed, she was just as dazzled and overwhelmed as Emma, sensing in the singer a genuine superiority that, although not of the celestial kind she attributed to herself, was far more striking and likely to be recognized. Marta showed off her linguistic skills, speaking in English, French, and Italian, but finally succumbed to Serafina’s insistence on speaking Spanish so that Emma could understand. And it was on Emma that Serafina mainly turned her charm, her modesty, the irresistible grace of her gestures, her voice that sang rather than spoke; and she gazed at her with wide, shining eyes that sparkled with sympathy and nascent affection. And Emma finally lost all grasp on reason when Serafina, tapping herself on the forehead with her fan, exclaimed, “Ah, of course! Eccola qui! I knew it . . . this lady, Señor Reyes’s wife, I knew I had seen her before, in a different time and place. But when I saw that gesture, that lift of le sopracciglie . . . there she was, the very image, yes, it’s her to the life. . . .”

  Emma opened her mouth, uncomprehending. Marta guessed what this was about and felt a twinge of envy. Serafina was about to compare Emma to some illustrious woman.

  But Serafina had not finished. “Mochi, Minghetti, come over here and tell me who this lady reminds you of. Isn’t she the very image?”

  Mochi smiled and dutifully studied Emma, not even attempting to spot the resemblance, as if he were onstage feigning curiosity and interest during a dialogue.

  Minghetti paid much closer attention. He brought his broad, dark, Levantine face, with its large, blue, moist eyes, passionate and smiling, its glossy mustache and pointed beard, fine, silky, and slightly curly, very close to Emma’s flushed and almost frightened face; he fixed her with a cheerful, brazen gaze and even moved the candlestick on the piano so that the glow lit up her features, which he was now examining as if entranced.

  Mochi soon gave up. He couldn’t see who it was that Serafina meant. Minghetti was saying, “Wait, wait,” as if hoping to conjure up an image. Emma felt quite captivated; Minghetti was so close, she could suddenly smell in him “the new man,” and his eyes, fixed on her, provoked an intoxicating blend of delights that she savored in her mouth before swallowing them down.

  When Minghetti also declared that memory failed him, Serafina said, “Honestly, you men are useless! Surely you remember . . . La Parini!”

  “Of course, the great tragic diva of Florence! Yes, she’s the very image!” exclaimed Mochi, neglecting to add that he could see no resemblance whatsoever.

  Minghetti, who had never seen La Parini, boomed, “You’re quite right. The expression, the gestures, the vivacious eyes . . . and the fire. . . .”

  And smiling at Serafina, he added in a confiding tone, “Except that the features, in this instance, are more perfect.”

  “Oh, much more so,” said Serafina, who went on to explain that La Parini was a famous Florentine singer, who, in her day, had been unrivaled in all the tragic roles. Although Emma did not think this supposed resemblance as important as Marta’s envy suggested, she nevertheless felt pride throbbing in her throat, felt herself covered in glory. She thought, “Listening to the things they’re saying to me and gazing into the eyes of this man, I can barely believe that anyone in this obscure little town where I was born can ever have felt such pleasure.”

  The conversation was interrupted shortly after this in order that Serafina could sing again, this time with Mochi and Minghetti, but after the ensuing ovation, they resumed their delicious chatter, which grew increasingly animated, with the participation this time of some of the bolder, more broad-minded young men of the town. Emma and Serafina stood alone for a few minutes by one of the windows, chatting and as if caressing each other with eyes and smiles; Bonifacio watched them from afar, then walked right past them without either woman noticing him; then he moved away again and stood in a corner contemplating “his work.”

  There they were together, talking and smiling and apparently getting on famously! They seemed to him a symbol of the absurd pact between duty and sin, between austere virtue and seductive passion. “I keep thinking the wildest things tonight,” thought Bonifacio, and he began to imagine the conversation of those two women smiling and chattering gaily away together, seemingly of one mind: “Yes, of course,” Emma was saying in her husband’s absurd imaginings, “you can love him all you like. I realize that you’ve fallen in love with him and he with you. Nothing wrong with that; they do the same in Turkey, and Turkish women are no less honest than us; as Marta always says, it’s all a question of customs, a matter of convention.”

  “Well, yes, I do love him. Why deny it? And he loves me. But he holds you in high regard too, despite what people call your rather difficult temperament. He both esteems and respects you. I can see that you and I are going to be firm friends. Why shouldn’t we be? You don’t know what we artists are like, what it means to live for one’s art, with no concern for the narrow-mindedness of small towns and conventional morality. After all, what kind of morality is that? We should all love everyone, you should love me, and I you, and your husband should love us both and we should both love your husband. The world, this sad finite life, should be nothing but love, love and music; everything else is a sheer waste of time.”

  This hypothetical dialogue, thought Bonifacio, was utterly absurd, of course, and yet . . . and yet. . . . Why shouldn’t life be like that? He had read that the patriarchs in the Bible had several wives, Abraham, to name but one. The name Abraham brought with it that of Sarah, his barren wife. “Isaac!” said a voice like thunder inside him. Emma was Sarah. Serafina was Hagar. All that was lacking was an Ishmael, which was unlikely, given Serafina’s habits, and Isaac, yes, Isaac! Who knows? Why was his heart saying to him, “Remember Sarah, be hopeful”? Twice in the same evening, an evening that should have been filled with quite different emotions, his soul had been filled with love for his Isaac . . . for his son. . . . He seemed suddenly to have developed a fever; or perhaps he was going mad; he had begun by comparing himself to the Virgin and now with Abraham . . . but however nonsensical that was, a secret, superstitious hope was filling him, overwhelming him.

  And when he looked again at his wife and the singer, who had been joined now by Mochi, Marta, Minghetti, and Nepomuceno, Bonifacio felt a kind of repugnance; the moral peace that occasionally filled his mind—and, one might even say, his very innards—set off alarm bells in his heart and in his conscience. He felt an intense desire to separate his wife from those people; and unable to repress that urge, he went over to the group and, in marked contrast to the general air of cheerfulness and the vaguely concupiscent atmosphere, he said, very sternly and with an energy that surprised Emma, who was the only one to notice his changed manner, “Gentleman . . . and ladies, enough chatter; the audience is growing impatient and the best thing these ladies and gentlemen can do is to begin the second half of the program. Let’s have more music rather than all this hullaballoo.”

  Everyone looked at him then. He was surely speaking in jest, and yet his expression and his tone of voice were serious, almost imposing.

  Minghetti made a comic bow and exclaimed, “You’re in charge, sir. We must obey the tyrant . . . our future impresario—forse.”

  At an opportune moment, Serafina turned her back on the others and, fixing her ga
ze on her beloved, opened her eyes wide in a look of affectionate mockery that quickly turned to fire.

  Bonifacio trembled slightly inside but pretended not to notice and did not even smile in response.

  “Come on, sing!” he said, pretending to play up to his new role as despot.

  Mochi bowed too, and Minghetti, after making a deep bow, sat down at the piano to accompany the duet for tenor and soprano with which the second half began.

  Nepomuceno took his seat next to Marta, and Bonifacio sat very close to his wife, who was breathing hard, inhaling happiness through mouth and nose.

  And while she, oblivious to his presence beside her, was devouring with her eyes both soprano and baritone, Bonifacio, with a sad, serious, and tenderly curious eye, was looking back and forth between his wife’s pale, worn face and her belly, which had disappointed him once already; and listening, without taking it in, to the romantic duet, he muttered to himself, “No matter. Sarah was even older.”

  13

  THE CONCERT did not finish until one in the morning, and as was the custom in the town, instead of everyone going their separate ways, the young men began earnestly dancing, to the great delight of the young women, who had put up with the two or three hours of music in the hope that afterward they would be able to dance for another two or three hours. Emma was determined to stay until not another living soul remained. As for Marta, she was too busy to think about time. She was so preoccupied with pursuing her prey, with hunting down the wild beast to whom she had surrendered herself body and soul, that she could no longer see or hear what was in front of her eyes; for her, there was no one else in the world but Don Juan Nepomuceno with his gray side-whiskers! Long before the concert ended, they had gone their own way, sitting in one corner of the room, where Marta was revealing her soul, as well as a little, or a lot, of very white breast, to that sentimental administrator and future manager of the chemical factory. Körner, although initially deep in conversation with Mochi and subsequently with the brigadier general and the chief highways engineer, was keeping a watchful eye on the couple and feeling very pleased with his daughter. He wholeheartedly applauded the skill and delicacy displayed by his worthy offspring when first one, then two or three of the town’s most distinguished young men went over to her to ask the favor of a waltz or some such thing, and were politely and coldly dismissed by the sturdy German, who wasn’t dancing because . . . and she would then supply a hastily cobbled-together and deliberately unconvincing excuse. She had to be crystal-clear with Nepomuceno, even at the risk of offending those dancers, which she perhaps enjoyed doing anyway, because this was by way of a sign making her real reason for those snubs transparently obvious, namely, that it was more important to her to be there talking to Nepomuceno than leaping about and arousing who knows what appetites in those splendid and usually red-faced and red-blooded young men.